Chapter 18

Re-labeling Others

Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is.
Treat a person as if he were what he could be,
and he will become what he could and should be.
--Goethe

Love is a Soothing, Healing Balm
What's the first thing we withhold when we've been hurt, offended, rejected, criticized, abandoned, humiliated, shamed, diminished or not approved of? Love. What's the one thing that heals all things? Love. Is it easy to love when things are not going well? No, of course it's not. Yet, as you've seen in the first chapter of this book, the transformational power of love can transform the negative energy of sugar into a positive energy.
    The energy of LOVE, as we explored its power, reveals to us a most transformational tool, if we utilize it correctly. Now understand this, you are and have been utilizing attitudinal energy all along. What you can now begin to understand is why, when you are mentally forceful and possibly condemning and wrong-making in your attitudes, you get resistive and rejecting kinds of results. You are, in fact, withholding love and pushing out with attitudinal energy that most likely has the opposite effect.
    The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. The interesting thing about this is that indifference, which seems to be neutral, has a powerful energy to it in any situation which calls for attention. By withholding that attention from someone, or directing our attention elsewhere, we intentionally create an energy vacuum which is filled with all of that person's fear of rejection and failure. This is why "ignore it, and it will go away" doesn't work very well with disruptive behavior in others. While it is necessary to withdraw our attention from the BEHAVIOR that we don't want any more of, we must balance or replace that energy with attention to, or love for, the person and for the desired behavior. This is what re-labeling does. It removes our attention from the unwanted aspect or behavior and replaces it with unconditional love toward the person's innate ability to achieve the desired outcome.
    Re-labeling is a very high form of love, as long as it is freely given with regard to the recipient's requests or preferences. Love is such a soothing, healing balm when it is given unconditionally. It is imperative that our re-labeling of others be undertaken with earnestness, integrity, compassion and mercy.

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    Because we've been exploring how our thoughts energetically have an effect on others, I think it's important to qualify what a pure intention is, as opposed to trying to control what another person thinks and does.
    If you and I stand facing each other and push against each other's hands in a little battle of wills, when I push on you, you push me back. If I get stronger, you get stronger in response. The push, push back continues with one person trying to use more muscle power to over come the other, until what? Some one wins, or some one concedes. This is what is generally going on in relationships, when it comes to thinking we have to push, pull, coerce and threaten an individual to give us what we want. We tend to move into this way of doing things after we've asked for what we want and have either been refused or ignored.
    Women will often say to me, "But I have asked. In fact I've asked, and asked and asked. I've asked a million times or more!" Now, you can hear the attitude, and it's packed with anger and resentments. And all I did was write what was spoken, but the vibe is clearly there, isn't it?

    As you step more fully into your power, and you have been asking for what you want, but people are still not giving you what you want within a reasonable time, then here are some questions to ask yourself. What we may not be looking at here is:

How did I ask for what I wanted?
Was what I asked for laden with an angry, resentful vibe?
What was the spirit in which I asked?
Was what I said congruent with my attitude?
What kind of energy did I hold when I asked?
Was I asking with an expectation that you would or wouldn't give it to me?
Did I come at you with an attitude that you were too incompetent to give me what I wanted in the first place?

You see, we weren't taught to evaluate what undercurrents we are sending out in the predominant vibes. We look at the results we are getting from someone and then blame them for being problematic, which is energetically pushing back or pushing against. Certainly, they may have come into our lives with their problematic personality styles already in place. But the key is how we are reacting to this very real behavior.
    In taking our power back, we are willing to become observers of ourselves, without beating ourselves up and making ourselves wrong. Instead, we are willing to be sensitive to what's happening attitudinally, and we take corrective action.

Before I can change anybody else I must first change myself.

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It is the energy behind the request that really matters. Holding a different attitude by re-labeling another person will reign your errant energy back in. You will stop pushing against them with the attitude you've been holding against them and the vibes you are sending out. If you want to hold something against them, make it good; make it desirable.
    We can take our power back by re-labeling ourselves. When we regard ourselves positively, with resolve, our attitudinal energy about ourselves speaks powerfully. This can change our relationships with people who have previously had more intrinsic power than we were holding for ourselves.
    Now, with our resolve about who we are and what we value, we can begin dealing with those people and situations that have been problematic in our world. We have been experiencing much distress from all that we've been trying to control with our attitudinal resistance; pushing back and trying to overpower with bigger energy, verbal threats and consequences. Instead of trying to overpower, control and make situations and people complacent, we will instead send new vibes. The energy from a new label is powerful and in so doing we must be respectful and allowing for the best to come forth.

Points to Remember

1) Everyone has free will. You cannot control an individual or any situation involving other people. You can, however, influence and affect a behavior and draw them in, energetically, to a new energy and interaction.
2) It is normal to react to attitudinal energy coming at us, whether it's positive or negative. We always have the power to choose how we will respond energetically, verbally and behaviorally.
3) We can transform the energy we send out by re-labeling ourselves first, so that we are coming from a power base that is self-approving and empowered.
4) We can learn to transform the energy of an interaction by how we re-label others.
5) In re-labeling others, we are in fact changing ourselves first by adopting a new attitude.
6) It is healthy to ask for what you want and hold firm to a vision of a desired outcome, and in doing so, you are in fact changing yourself first.
7) Re-labeling is a powerful energetic tool which must be undertaken with reverence and responsibility. It is imperative that your intentions be unselfish and for the good of the whole.
8) Anything hurtful that you've done attitudinally up to this point was in accordance with previous conditioning and lack of knowledge. There isn't anything that your vibes have energetically sent out in the past that can't be reversed or healed.

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To Become a TurnAround Specialist: Re-label, Re-label, Re-label!

Guidelines
To become a TurnAround Specialist with a person or situation which is very problematic for you to deal with, write down every thing you've ever thought about them. These will be the labels you've given them.
    Use the same process on them that you utilized on your own labels in Chapter 9. With some practice, you can re-label them on the spot mentally while you are interacting with them. Or you can write down everything that you think is wrong with this person on the left hand side of a piece of paper, and then on the right hand side of the page, write the behaviors you would prefer to have as your experience with this person.
    The key word in re-labeling is: prefer. If you notice the energy you have when you say it in comparison to words such as - like, want, need - you can feel a different vibrational and emotional energy. The re-labeling process is not about getting you all jazzed up and over-zealous emotionally.
    We are not going to be forcing anything here.
    What we are intentionally doing, is allowing a new reality, a new behavioral experience to be born. The key word and intention is: allowing.
    I specifically use words that have an easy energy to them, because words have their own vibes. If you will pay attention to the vibes connected with each of the words (labels) I have listed on the left hand side of the page below, you will feel an "icky" vibe. Well, the person who has received this vibe feels icky too. You feel icky when you are with them and specifically when those behaviors emerge over and over again. In using empowering words, you begin to feel the powerful vibration of the word instantly, and it is soothing. If you don't have a softened feeling when you finish re-labeling, then you need to go back and work on your list some more, because you probably haven't found the best word to re-label them with yet.
    Right now, your mind is probably still very tied up with the energy of their behavior, and you can't believe that new behaviors will unfold by simply re-labeling someone who's been doing these terrible things to you, at you, behind your back, etc. You can see why this has been so painful and difficult for people to pull themselves out of negative patterns of reaction to energy and undesirable behaviors, when they have a "committee" of other people around them holding expectations, and therefore the vibes, of the continuation of their behaviors. You have most likely felt this yourself within those areas of your life that you are presently re-labeling.

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My Negative Label / Attitude Re-Label

No matter what you call the behavior of the person most offending you, it will dramatically affect your experience of them, because this frames your perception.
    Right now you may be really struggling with how re-labeling them is going to affect or change your experience with this person who so clearly operates in the negative with you 99.9% of the time.
    So let's review the power that a label has to affect behavior, no matter at what age it is given, or taken on, as the behavior of preference.

Remember the #1 Rule of Behavior Modification: Before you can change anyone else, you must first change yourself. In the mental act of re-labeling, you are actually changing yourself, and you are in fact wanting to change your experience of this person. When you deliberately and intentionally put your focus on a new desired outcome, you will be causing, initiating and holding different energy.

Why Re-labeling Works in Relationship to Your Mind
If you tried to perceive everything within your field of sight, and every sound, taste, smell and touch that you're exposed to all the time, your mind would be flooded. Because of the excessive stimuli that are constantly in and around us, the mind has a built-in mechanism to filter out all but the small amount we can focus on at one time. It's called the 

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Reticular Activating System, which I will simply refer to as RAS, and the job of the RAS is to police out anything unlike what we are focused on. So if we are focused on the problem, the problem, the problem, the RAS helps us to see more of the problem, and only the problem.
    In the re-labeling process, we do spend some time getting honest about what we really think and feel, by identifying what we perceive the problem to be. It is an important step in re-labeling and in becoming a TurnAround Specialist, because it is important to make sure we know what is at the root of the problem, if we are going to chart a new course.
    To chart that new course of action, we must first establish what the problem really is, and secondly turn our focus away from the problem and toward HOW WE'D LIKE IT TO BE. What's important to understand here is that, for right now, we are not about the business of figuring out anything more than HOW WE'D LIKE IT TO BE.
    The mind is a creative mechanism, and it's only desire is to create. The RAS is the system which enables us to function productively. It will continue to proceed in the direction you aim it, so you must look around, to either side, or the back of the problem and aim your thinking toward the end result of what it is you truly desire.
    This is different from avoidance.
    Avoidance is pretending that: 1) the problem or behavior doesn't exist, 2) that it either will resolve itself and go away, or 3) somebody else will handle it.
    In re-labeling, we are no longer suppressing negative feelings by pretending there is no problem. We are going to sit on ourselves and make ourselves look at, and write about, what we are experiencing. Through this act of venting, probing, feeling and picking at the problem, we can then get very decisive about exactly what needs to be re-labeled. We decide upon a new label through rigorously exploring how we'd like it to be. At the infancy stage of learning this process, it is important to be extremely disciplined with our minds by not letting the "habitual, realistic" mind take over with "HOW am I going to make this happen?" stuff!

Accessing New Behaviors and Experiences

We access new behavior, and thus new experiences, through interrupting our habitual, realistic thinking. You want to do this by asking one specific kind of How question, but not the other How. Please understand that we have two entirely different HOWs.
    The first is "How would I prefer it to be?" We want to spend a lot of time with this one. This is actually the way we interrupt thinking and start firing new electrons and neurons, which push forward into creating new pathways in our brains, which access new creative territory of the mind. And it takes getting disciplined with your mind.
    The second HOW, is "How am I ever going to make this happen?" To attempt to answer this question directly usually results in a feeling of being 

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over-whelmed, because, again, the task is not to manipulate things out there, but rather to work with ourselves in our own minds. The answers to this "How?" come spontaneously from the creative ideas which begin to unfold, specifically because you set a decision and a desire in motion by pondering HOW WOULD I PREFER IT TO BE?

Name It and You'll Claim It As Your Experience
The RAS is a major key to how you mentally and attitudinally re-label a person or situation. Once you've come up with a label that is in alignment with how you'd like your experience to be, you will begin to soften some of those defensive edges you've been shouldering up.
    When you are looking at the problem, the problem, the problem, the RAS is policing out anything unlike that: namely the solution or a new creative idea and language that will ultimately begin to interject into your interactions and in finding new agreeable solutions.
    To illustrate this, imagine you are hurrying to leave for a business trip. You grab your bags and stop in the kitchen for your car keys. But they aren't where you thought you put them on the key holder! Your fear level immediately begins to rise, and you start saying out loud, "I can't find my car keys; I can't find my car keys." Your mind hears you, and the RAS kicks into gear to comply with your statement. As your frustration grows, you may even begin yelling, "I can't find my car keys!"
    The RAS now kicks into high gear to give you an increased laser focus for NOT finding your car keys, and now you can't see much at all. Finally, you decide to call a cab and get yourself to the airport. Several days later you return; you walk in the kitchen and the first thing you see on the counter in full sight are your keys, just below the key holder where you were standing when you starting yelling, "I can't find my car keys!" You literally could not see them because the RAS was policing them entirely out of your vision, because of your increasing fear and focus on the problem, the problem, the problem!
    Conversely, when you are focused on a new possibility, you will see more of it around you than you thought possible.
    Let me illustrate how this works. If you have children, do you remember when you decided to get pregnant and start a family? Immediately after that decision was made, you probably began seeing lots of babies at supermarkets and malls that you hadn't noticed before. Or, remember when you bought your last car. The second you drove it off the lot, what did you see? A gazzillion of the same exact car on the freeways, right?
    This is a powerful illustration of exactly how the RAS could work for us, if we would only get control of it and utilize it more. Let's say that 45˚ of our visual world is the problem, and that's what we look at, day after day. When we've just had a heated disagreement with someone, that's all 

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we can seem to focus on. We play it over and over in our minds, each time telling them off (in our mental dialogue) just a little bit better than the time before. We may play this scene in our minds for an extended period of time. We may even cry out that we wanted it to be different, but our focus is still on the perceptions we hold of what we experienced that they did or did not do. We remain locked into the 45˚ visual angle. We are not even beginning to tap into the remaining 315˚ of the 360˚ awaiting us.
    There are infinite possibilities co-existing all at the same, and we can structure them into whatever perceptual reality we choose, but only when, and only if we look around into the 315˚ of the unseen. It is in the blank spaces, the white screen of our minds, that we can begin playing out new scenarios, new scripts in our minds. It is through the practice of playing with different scenarios that we can find new innovative solutions to old, reoccurring challenges and frustrating people.
    The more you give yourself to doing this, the more effective you will become in turning things around.
    In looking out into the 315? of what's possible, your attitudinal energy is instantly changed. When you are no longer looking at what's been bothering you, burdening you, your attitude shifts. With each little thought about the possibility that this person has within them the capacity to be more accommodating, generous and good willed, your energy is changed toward them to be more accommodating, generous and good willed.
    When this happens, you are sending soothing vibes that are conducive to affecting, and even softening, their behavior or response back to you.
    Think about it. When you are sitting with someone you love, and you are just loving them, when they turn to speak to you they feel the good vibes. The likelihood of giving you back good vibes is pretty good, wouldn't you say?
    By the same token, if you are sitting there mentally ticked off at a person, you are sending less than loving vibes aren't you? It would be expecting a lot for them to be the loving happy camper in this situation, when you are not! Yet, we expect this kind of thing all the time. Not only do we think people should read our minds, but that they should be nice, even though we are not being nice in our thinking, attitudes and vibes toward them. Now that's crazy!
    What will also happen in your communication will change dramatically that will totally change you and alter the events of your life.
    Several things happen here that will dramatically affect energy.
    When you put your focus day after day upon what you are deciding you prefer your experience to be with this person, you are building a new language for yourself. When a situation occurs (and it will) that is a repeat of what its' always been, you begin sending that new vibe, because you have decided to put your focus of attention on the new label. In re-labeling, and specifically in writing about a preference you would like as your experience, you will begin to use different and more powerful 

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language. This new language will have the energy of resolve and new expectation behind it, packing a new, and delightful punch!

    For example, when he responds in his usual jerk-ish way, instead of saying what you usually say: "You Jerk!" ? packed with a big angry vibe, you will begin to shift into the new label, attitude and language you've been thinking about and writing about. Then you would say something like, "You know Henry, when you roll your eyes at me when I make a legitimate request of you, I would prefer that you be more generous, accommodating and honoring of me instead. That's what I'd like to experience more of with you Henry!"
    Now you've just taken this communication to a higher level.

So let's say Henry doesn't really trust you or that new attitude of yours yet, and he doesn't want to let go of the power that being a jerk has given him over you yet, and so he says:
    "Well, hell no, I really don't want to be accommodating."
    Then, without trying to make him "get it," and still trusting the power of the new attitudinal energy you are sending to him by electing to retain your new attitude in the face of adversity, you will then respond:
    "Well, Henry, I hear that you really don't want to be accommodating with me, and I respect your right to not be. However, I'd still like you to consider it in the future, and I will continue to look for it from you."
    Remember the soothing, healing balm of LOVE, and remain calm in the face of his refusal. You are not done yet. This smacks of defeat, but if you keep doing what you are doing, you will have an effect.

What You've Accomplished So Far:

1) You've Turned Things Around on Henry
2) You've clearly requested what you wanted
3) You've had a clean attitude and sent really good vibes
4) When you were rejected, you didn't give up; you planted another seed and sent more LOVE energy!
5) You can leave Henry alone, and know you just scored.

The next time you and Henry interact, he will have softened those edges just a smidgen. Don't expect somebody to immediately trust the new you or the new energy you are trying to send. Why would they trust it, when they've had a bazillion other experiences with you to the contrary?
    Give this some time, and repeat, repeat, repeat. With good practice, keeping your attitude clean and your focus and language on preferred results, you will have a totally different relationship with this person in less that 6 months time.
    Don't over-invest yourself with this person, or you will be over-doing it. Neediness, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment and over-efforting also 

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sends pushy, icky energy. People push back and resist when you are pushing too hard and are over zealous in trying to get them to "get it".

    This must consistently be done with a free hand. In other words, you change the label, then you hold the new label in your thinking each and every time they behave another, more offensive way. When the situations occur and you feel the need to confront, use your new language, which speaks directly and powerfully to exactly how you'd like it to be.

Re-labeling: An Altruistic Act
Becoming a TurnAround Specialist is altruistic in nature. Altruism is unselfish concern for the welfare of others. The key to experiencing miraculous results is the part about the "unselfish" concern and regard for the highest and the best in the welfare of others.

ALTURISM: DELAYED AND DISTANT EFFECTS

One of the most famous altruists of this century is Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in Calcutta. At Harvard University, psychologist David McClelland showed a film about Mother Teresa to students, and measured the amount of IgA in their saliva before and after showing the film, to see whether an increase occurred. (Salivary IgA is an antibody that protects against colds and upper respiratory infections.) Some students said they liked the film of Mother Teresa going about her work, and in them IgA levels increased. But interestingly, "even those who professed intense dislike for Mother Teresa --some said she was a fake and that her work did no good -- showed improvement in immune function." McClelland believes this study shows that unconscious beliefs and motives affect people's bodily reactions more profoundly than ordinary awareness. He states that someone like Mother Teresa reaches "the consciously disapproving people in a part of their brains that they were unaware of and that was still responding to the strength of her tender loving care."
    When McClelland tested this study's validity by having the students watch a film on Attila the Hun, salivary IgA levels fell. Altruism behaves like a miracle drug, and a strange one at that. It has beneficial effects on the person doing the helping --the helper's high, it benefits the person to whom the help is directed, and it can stimulate healthy responses in people at a distance who may view it only obliquely.
    Although studies on altruism and the helper's high sometimes employ the complex language of neurotransmitters, receptor sites and chemicals such as endorphins, these behaviors are really not esoteric. Everyone knows it feels good to "do something nice" for someone else. Part of the warm feeling may well be due to coming home --returning to our original, undivided, larger self, the part of us that connects and that knows no divisions in space and time.

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