Your Journey to Success: How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along the Way
By Kenny Weiss
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About this ebook
None of the books showed me or explained where that feeling comes from, why we all get it and how to overcome it. Without that information, I couldn't execute all of their wonderful suggestions.
So this is my story and how I took all of that great information from all of those great success teachers, I collated it and then added to it. I discuss where that feeling comes from, why we all get it and how to overcome it. This book bridges the gap. When you have this information, this skillset to overcome that "feeling" than you can put into place all of their incredible advice and have the personal and professional success we are all searching for.
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Your Journey to Success - Kenny Weiss
side.
CHAPTER ONE
THE DAY EVERYTHING CHANGED
It was the middle of the night and the house was pitch black. I stumbled down the hallway using my hands to feel the walls because turning on lights in the middle of the night was not acceptable. I knew the walk well. I had navigated it many times in the dark. My small hand found the familiar trim and case molding of the doorjamb to the bathroom. Because closing the door in a normal way could instigate a thunderous reprimand, I had a method to avoid making any noise. With one hand on the doorknob, I would slowly and silently turn the knob so the bolt was inside the door. To avoid any creaking in the door hinges, I would use the other hand to apply pressure against the door, stiffening the hinges, taking out any slack and therefore any noise. The door-closing process could take between ten and fifteen seconds.
Once the door was closed without incident, a sense of relief washed over me. The most treacherous part of using the bathroom at night was over. Or so I thought. As I tiptoed toward the toilet, I was still in the dark in the outer vanity area because even the light coming from under the door could cause problems with my parents. I had to wait until I got to the water closet to turn on the light. My left hand located the doorjamb. Just inside on the wall at about chest height I found the light switch and flipped it on. I froze. There was my mother, passed out naked on the toilet.
Immediately, I felt a rush beginning in my feet, an electrical warmth filling both legs simultaneously. Envision something like the old Star Trek show when they were transported out of the USS Enterprise. As the rush accelerated and began to overtake me, I heard myself screaming inside, I’m changing, I’m changing.
I instinctively knew that who I was up until that moment at age ten was leaving me. I would never be that person again. The I
or me
that I knew was dying and I could do nothing to stop it. Just before the final surge of electricity swept over me, the completion of my previous life, I tried to shake my mom awake. I attempted to sit her up and begged her to speak to me. That’s when the tears started to cascade down my face and the panic set in, Mom, please don’t be dead. Please Mom, wake up.
I have no memory of what happened next. I felt as if I were transported out of my body like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock being beamed to an alien planet. I had to separate from this moment before I could be put back together and go to another place. My next memory is being on the couch in the family room cradled in my dad’s arms. My head is buried in his chest. His powerful hands are rubbing the hair on my head as I am sobbing uncontrollably. I only recall one piece of the conversation. I had asked my dad, How long has this been going on?
He replied, Kenny, this has been going on for years.
It was then I was hit with the next most intense feeling I have ever experienced. This was the first time I felt it. Shame, utter and complete shame. I literally convulsed as I replied, Oh my God, Dad, I’m so sorry. Look at how upset I am. I have only seen this once, but you have been dealing with this for years. I feel so selfish!
Physically, emotionally, I became a different person right then and there. That night, everything changed. The trauma took away my sense of self and my inherent power. My trauma changed who I was as a person. I now felt rejected, inadequate, powerless, and worthless.
Trauma Wears Many Different Faces
Some people equate trauma to something big like war, death, extreme acts of violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or natural disasters. While those are all examples of trauma, trauma doesn’t have to be big like that. It can be any significant negative event or incident that makes us feel bad, scared, ashamed, or hurt. What trauma is to each of us depends on a variety of factors, including age. No matter what kind of childhood we’ve had, nobody escapes trauma while growing up. If you define trauma as any sense of loss of self, we have all been traumatized as children. Like it or not, events from our childhood shape us. Without being intentional, parents, teachers, and coaches inflict trauma in simple, subtle ways like making sarcastic comments, being dismissive, being late, and not valuing our time. Being controlling, being judgmental, or always having to be right are other ways that adults may inflict trauma on children. It is just like the kind and loving words my dad said to me. His intent was to love me but I felt shame.
We may experience big traumas later in life, like the death of a loved one, divorce, or a tragic accident. But those bigger traumas evoke the same feelings we had in response to the often more subtle original traumas we experienced as children. How we cope with life depends on how we make sense of those traumas. For those of us who haven’t been taught how to deal with our trauma, we get stuck living in the worst day ever. The intense feelings of those moments replay themselves throughout our life because, in an effort to heal, we unintentionally and proactively seek them out and re-inflict them upon ourselves.
At any age, we tend to rationalize trauma, to minimize it, suppress it, repress it, and most of all deny it. We have to do all this so we can survive it. Now, as adults, we are completely unaware that we are reliving our trauma daily. Many clients who come into my office believe they have never suffered any trauma. That is how severe the disease of denial is in our culture. I have yet to see a person who is not stuck in this cycle. No one is immune, regardless of personality type or degree of trauma suffered. We stay stuck because no one has taught us about it and we don’t know we’re affected. It has been my experience that if any part of our personal or professional life is not where we want it to be, it is rooted in the trauma cycle I am about to describe here. Unaddressed trauma survives in a vacuum, fueling our thoughts and behaviors, so we inadvertently re-create the same feelings we had when we first experienced the trauma. We call this the Worst Day Cycle.
The Worst Day Cycle
Trauma happens to us. When it does, our authentic self and power is taken from us.
Fear. Due to the trauma, we experience the fear of rejection, inadequacy, and/ or the fear of powerlessness itself.
Shame. Shame is the feeling of having little-to-no worth. We use those negative feelings against ourselves to try to get our power back.
Denial. We deny, suppress, repress, and minimize our trauma to preserve our self-concept. By doing so, we set ourselves up for repeating the cycle again.
The Cycle Keeps Circling
No matter what kind of trauma we experienced as a child, we replay that loop through our choices of friends, hobbies, careers, and relationships. We are attempting to take control of the trauma by victimizing ourselves because that gives us our power back. That’s what is happening when someone going through a divorce sleeps around and gets drunk every weekend. They feel rejected, inadequate, and/or powerless so as they head out once again they scream, I’ll show them!
They are taking their negative feelings out on themselves. Even though they are unaware, their theory becomes, I can’t get my spouse to love me, so I’ll show them. I won’t love myself either, but at least I am in control of doing it to myself. I got my power back!
Stress versus Fear
The American Medical Association (AMA) states that 80 percent of all health problems are stress related. That stress reaction is actually fear. We call it stress because we are allowed to say it happens to us. If I tell you I am stressed, it sends the message, I am powerful and superhuman in my relationship and career. I’m not a failure.
Fear is a different animal in our society. If we tell people we are afraid, it sends the message that we are weak and definitely a failure. To avoid this, we have all dropped into denial and created an empowering word to disguise what is really happening. We then continue our stress-related activity, which is self-victimization but at least we are in charge of it. This is another way we try to get our power back, though it inevitably backfires. When we are in denial, we keep self-victimizing ourselves, which keeps us repeating the cycle. When we use the word stress instead of fear, we are perpetuating the cycle. Society tells us, it’s okay to be stressed because it means I’m doing more than you are.
By doing this, we gain sympathy from others for how much we are enduring. In essence, this gives us power. It also gives us permission to revictimize ourselves because we are stealing sympathy from others. If we used the term fear instead of stress, people would point out how we are doing that to ourselves.
The Research of Science and Emotions
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 85 percent of all diseases have an emotional element. That means it is incredibly rare that any illness or disease or injury is caused by anything other than what you feel inside. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) backs this up and is considered one of the largest studies ever conducted on the association between childhood maltreatment and health and social problems as an adult. In this long-term study, Kaiser Permanente and the CDC had 17,000 Health Maintenance Organization members undergo a physical exam and share information about their childhood experience of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. Participants were recruited between 1995 and 1997. About two-thirds of people reported at least one adverse childhood experience. How many adult childhood experiences (ACEs) were experienced was strongly linked with high-risk health behaviors in adulthood such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity, and severe obesity. ACEs were also correlated with depression, heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, and untimely death. Although this is considered a landmark study in the medical community, few want to talk about it.
Power Retrieval
If you are not dealing with your emotions and the unresolved trauma trapped inside of your body, you are revictimizing yourself. Being sick and hurt is the single greatest way we gain power over others, because what happens when we get sick and hurt? Everyone comes to our rescue. We get our power back. There is a big fear about addressing this truth. In fact, my editors were concerned that by making this controversial statement about how horrible illnesses, diseases, poor relationships, and careers are somehow self-imposed that I might alienate my readers. Although it’s not in my best interest to address this, the science backs it up. But I understand why we don’t want to hear it—because right now, it is the only way we know how to overcome the trauma we suffered. We refuse to see the reality because we need the power we get from being the victim; it is the only coping skill we know. We can only do what we know. And that is precisely why I chose to write this book. It is time we face our denial and learn another way.
Can New Ideas Really Help?
Offering a new way can be met with skepticism. In the book Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert recounts what happened to Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in the 1840s. He practiced in an obstetrics ward in Vienna and noticed,
The impoverished women who were under the care of hospital midwives were not nearly as susceptible to fatal childbed fever as were the wealthier women, who were cared for by doctors, and he figured out that the discrepancy could be due to the fact that the doctors were not washing their hands before examining the women. Since the doctors were on a daily schedule that took them straight from the morgue, where they did research, to the obstetrics ward, where they performed their examinations, their hands were often still covered with the blood and germs of the corpses when they saw their patients—but nobody knew of the existence of germs then… As an experiment, Semmelweis tried washing his hands before seeing patients, with the result that his patients no longer contracted the dreaded fever. But when he implored his colleagues to do the same, they scoffed and laughed, paying no attention to his seemingly outrageous idea. Finally, in 1862 in a desperate attempt to make his point, he cut off one of his fingers and plunged his hand into the open belly of one of the corpses, only to develop a fever and die within a few days. (p. 223, Molecules of Emotion)
It can take time to accept new ways of looking at things because of the Worst Day Cycle. It causes us to scoff at anything that is new or that threatens our status quo. Throughout this book, you will be challenged to wash your hands.
Your health and happiness will be determined by your ability to do that.
It’s Time to Share the Truth
The trauma and feelings I experienced after discovering my mom in the bathroom sowed the seeds for this book. It has taken me years to research and understand fully what happened and what it all means. I am finally at a
place where I can share it with you. I am not perfect. I have blind spots in my Worst Day Cycle. None of this is a race to the finish line; it’s a process. I continue to experience shame and denial, but if something bad is happening in my life, I look at myself first before judging or blaming others. As a result, I rediscover the authentic child who was lost that night and get more freedom, joy, and spontaneity in my life.