All I want for Christmas .

One of my friends who obviously doesn't have kids used to call them " barters." As long as he held that metaphor, can you imagine how kids responded to him? Recently, though, he filled in for Santa Claus at a department store—several of us set him up so he had to do it—and he got to have hundreds of " barters" come and sit on his lap.

Well, that one experience gave him a totally new view of children and changed his metaphor forever. Now he calls them " cuddles"! Do you think that changed the way he feels? You'd better believe it. Calling your kids " brats" doesn't usually make you want to take good care of them or nurture them. Make sure that you have the appropriate metaphor that supports you in dealing with your children—remember, they listen and learn from you.

One of the most empowering global metaphors that has helped me through tough times is a story shared by many speakers in personal development. It's the simple story of a stonecutter. How does a stonecutter break open a giant boulder? He starts out with a big hammer and whacks the boulder as hard as he can. The first time he hits it, there's not a scratch, not a chip—nothing. He pulls back the hammer and hits it again and again—100, 200, 300 times without even a scratch. After all this effort, the boulder may not show even the slightest crack, but he keeps on hitting it. People sometimes pass by and laugh at him for persisting when obviously his actions are having no effect. But a stonecutter is very intelligent. He knows that just because you don't see immediate results from your current actions, it doesn't mean you're not making progress. He keeps hitting at different points in the stone, over and over again, and at some point—maybe on the 500th or 700th hit, maybe on the 1, 0004th hit—the stone doesn't just chip, but literally splits in half. Was if this one single hit that broke the stone open? Of course not. It was the constant and continual pressure being applied to something else. And pretty soon, what does it become? " And he said, " A butterfly."

I asked, " Can the other little caterpillars on the ground see that this caterpillar became a butterfly? " He said, " No." I said, " And when a caterpillar breaks out of the cocoon, what does he do? " Joshua said, " He flies." I said, " Yeah, he gets out and the sunlight dries off his wings and he flies. He's even more beautiful than when he was a caterpillar. Is he more free or less free? " Josh said, " He's much more free." And I said, " Do you think he'll have more fun? " And he said, " Yeah—he's got less legs to get tired! " And I said, " That's right, he does. He doesn't need legs anymore; he's got wings. I think your friend has wings now.

" You see, it's not for us to decide when somebody becomes a butterfly. We think it's wrong, but I think God has a better idea when the right time is. Right now it's winter and you want it to be summer, but God has a different plan. Sometimes we just have to trust that God knows how to make butterflies better than we do. And when we're caterpillars, sometimes we don't even realize that butterflies exist, because they're up above us—but maybe we should just remember that they're there." And Joshua smiled, gave me a big hug and said, " I bet he's a beautiful butterfly."

Metaphors can change the meaning you associate to anything, change what you link pain and pleasure to, and transform your life as effectively as they transform your language. Select them carefully, select them intelligently, select them so they will deepen and enrich your experience of life and that of the people you care about. Become a " metaphor detective." Whenever you hear someone using a metaphor that places limits, just step in, break their pattern, and offer a new one. Do this with others,

and do it for yourself.

So try the following exercise:

1. What is life? Write down the metaphors you've already chosen: " Life is like..." what? Brainstorm everything you can think of, because you probably have more than one metaphor for life. When you're in an unresourceful state, you probably call it a battle or a war, and when you're in a good state, maybe you think of it as a gift. Write them all down. Then review your list and ask yourself, " If life is such and such, what does it mean to me? " If life is sacred, what does that mean? If life is a dream, what does that mean? If all the world is a stage, what does that mean? Each of your metaphors empower and limit. " All the world's a stage" may be great because it means you can go out there and make a difference and be heard. But it also may mean you're someone who's always performing, instead of sharing your true feelings. So take a good look at the metaphors that you've made available to yourself. What are their advantages and disadvantages? What new metaphors might you like to apply to your life in order to feel more happy, free, and empowered?

2. Make a list of all the metaphors that you link to relationships or marriage. Are they empowering or disempowering? Remember, conscious awareness alone can transform your metaphors, because your

brain starts to say, " That doesn't work—that's ridiculous.'" And you can adopt a new metaphor easily. The beauty of this technology is that it's so simple.

3. Pick another area of your life that impacts you most—whether it's your business, your parents, your children, your ability to learn—and discover your metaphors for this area. Write these metaphors down and study their impact. Write down, " Learning is like playing." If studying is like " pulling teeth, " you can imagine the pain you're giving yourself! This might be a good metaphor to change, and change now/ Once again, notice the positive and negative consequences of each of your metaphors. Exploring them can create new choices for your life.

4. Create new, more empowering metaphors for each of these areas. Decide that from now on you're going to think of life as four or five new things to start with, at least. Life is not a war. Life is not a test. Life is a game, life is a dance, life is sacred, life is a gift, life is a picnic— whatever creates the most positive emotional intensity for you.

5. Finally, decide that you are going to live with these new, empowering metaphors for the next thirty days.

I invite you to allow the radiance of your new metaphors to " sweep you off your feet" and make you feel like you're " floating on air" until you arrive at " Cloud Nine." While you're " on top of the world, " you can look down on " Easy Street" and be " tickled pink, " knowing that the amount of joy you're feeling in this moment is only the " tip of the iceberg." Take control of your metaphors now and create a new world for yourself: a world of possibility, of richness, of wonder, and of joy. Once you've mastered the creative art of Grafting metaphors, transforming vocabulary, and asking empowering questions, you are ready to harness...

THE TEN EMOTIONS OF POWER

" There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion."

CARL JUNG

I'd like to introduce you to a fellow named Walt. Walt is a good, decent human being who always tries to do the right thing. He has his life down to a science: everything in its proper place and in the correct order. Weekdays he arises at exactly 6: 30, showers and shaves, gulps down some coffee, grabs his lunch pail filled with the requisite bologna sandwich and Twinkles, and runs out the door by 7: 10 to spend forty-five minutes in traffic. He arrives at his desk by 8: 00, where he sits down to do the same job he's been doing for the past twenty years.

At 5: 00 he goes home, pops the top on a " cold one, " and grabs the TV remote-control. An hour later his wife comes home and they decide whether to eat leftovers or throw a pizza in the microwave. After dinner he watches the news while his wife bathes their kid and puts him to bed. By no later than 9: 30 he's in the sack. He devotes his weekends to yard work, car maintenance, and sleeping in. Walt and his new wife have been married for three years, and while he wouldn't exactly describe their relationship as " inflamed with passion, " it's comfortable—even though lately it seems to be repeating a lot of the same patterns of his first marriage.

Do you know someone just like Walt? Maybe he's someone you know intimately—someone who never suffers the depths of utter devastation or despondency, but also someone who never revels in the heights of passion and joy. I've heard it said that the only difference between a rut and a grave is a few feet, and over a century ago, Thoreau observed that " the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." As we move into the next century, this phrase is unfortunately more applicable than ever. If there's one thing I've noticed in the countless letters I've received since I wrote Unlimited Power, it's the overwhelming prevalence of this kind of disassociation in people's lives—something that just " happened" out of their desire to avoid pain—and the hunger with which they seize upon an opportunity to feel more alive, more passionate, more electric. From my perspective, as I travel around the world, meeting people from all walks of life and " feeling the pulse" of literally hundreds of thousands of individuals, we all seem to instinctively realize the risk of emotional " flatline, " and desperately seek ways to get our hearts pumping again.

So many suffer from the delusion that emotions are entirely out of their control, that they're just something that spontaneously occurs in reaction to the events of our lives. Often we dread emotions as if they were viruses that zero in on us and attack when we're most vulnerable. Sometimes we think of them as " inferior cousins" to our intellect and discount their validity. Or we assume that emotions arise in response to what others do or say to us. What's the common element in all these global beliefs? It's the misconception that we have no control over these mysterious things called emotions.

Out of their need to avoid feeling certain emotions, people will often go to great, even ridiculous, lengths. They'll turn to drugs, alcohol, overeating, gambling; they'll lapse into debilitating depression. In order to avoid " hurting" a loved one (or being hurt by one), they'll suppress all emotions, end up as emotional androids, and ultimately destroy all the feelings of connection that got them together in the first place, thus devastating the ones they love most.

I believe there are four basic ways in which people deal with emotion. Which of these have you used today?

1. Avoidance. We all want to avoid painful emotions. As a result, most people try to avoid any situation that could lead to the emotions that they fear—or worse, some people try not to feel any emotions at all! If, for example, they fear rejection, they try to avoid any situation that could lead to rejection. They shy away from relationships. They don't apply for challenging jobs. Dealing with emotions in this way is the ultimate trap, because while avoiding negative situations may protect you in the short term, it keeps you from feeling the very love, intimacy, and connection that you desire most. And ultimately, you can't avoid feeling. A much more powerful approach is to learn to find the hidden, positive meaning in those things you once thought were negative emotions.

2. Denial. A second approach to dealing with emotion is the denial strategy. People often try to disassociate from their feelings by saying, " It doesn't feel that bad." Meanwhile, they keep stoking the fire within themselves by thinking about how horrible things are, or how someone has taken advantage of them, or how they do everything right but things still turn out wrong, and why does this always happen to them? In other words, they never change their focus or physiology, and they keep asking the same disempowering questions. Experiencing an emotion and trying to pretend it's not there only creates more pain. Once again, ignoring the messages that your emotions are trying to give you will not make things better. If the message your emotions are trying to deliver is ignored, the emotions simply increase their amperage; they intensify until you finally pay attention. Trying to deny your emotions is not the solution. Understanding them and using them is the strategy you'll learn in this

chapter.

3. Competition. Many people stop fighting their painful emotions and decide to fully indulge in them. Rather than learn the positive message their emotion is trying to give them, they intensify it and make it even worse than it is. It becomes a " badge of courage, " and they begin to compete with others, saying, " You think you've got it bad? Let me tell you how bad I've got it! " It literally becomes part of their identity, a way of being unique; they begin to pride themselves on being worse off than anyone else. As you can imagine, this is one of the deadliest traps of all. This approach must be avoided at all costs, because it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where the person ends up having an investment in feeling bad on a regular basis —and then they are truly trapped. A much more powerful and healthy approach to dealing with the emotions that we think are painful is to realize that they serve a positive purpose, and that is...

4. Learning and Using. If you want to make your life really work, you must make your emotions work for you. You can't run from them; you can't tune them out; you can't trivialize them or delude yourself about what they mean. Nor can you just allow them to run your life. Emotions, even those that seem painful in the short term, are truly like an internal compass that points you toward the actions you must take to arrive at your goals. Without knowing how to use this compass, you'll be

forever at the mercy of any psychic tempest that blows your way.

Many therapeutic disciplines begin with the mistaken presupposition that emotions are our enemies or that our emotional well-being is rooted in our past. The truth is that you and I can go from crying to laughing in a heartbeat if the pattern of our mental focus and physiology is merely interrupted strongly enough. Freudian psychoanalysis, for example, searches for those " deep, dark secrets" in our past to explain our present difficulties. Yet we all know that whatever you continually look for, you will surely find. If you're constantly looking for the reasons why your past has hamstrung your present, or why you're so " screwed up, " then your brain will comply by providing references to back up your request

and generate the appropriate negative emotions. How much better it would be to adopt the global belief that " your past does not equal your future"!

The only way to effectively use your emotions is to understand that they all serve you. You must learn from your emotions and use them to create the results you want for a greater quality of life. The emotions you once thought of as negative are merely a call to action. In fact, instead of calling them negative emotions, from now on in this chapter, let's call them Action Signals. Once you're familiar with each signal and its message, your emotions become not your enemy but your ally. They become your friend, your mentor, your coach; they guide you through life's most soaring highs and its most demoralizing lows. Learning to use these signals frees you from your fears and allows you to experience all the richness of which we humans are capable. To get to this point, then, you must change your global beliefs about what emotions are. They are not predators, substitutes for logic, or products of other people's whims. They are Action Signals trying to guide you to the promise of a greater quality of life.

If you merely react to your emotions through an avoidance pattern, then you'll miss out on the invaluable message they have to offer you. If you continue to miss the message and fail to handle the emotions when they first turn up, they'll grow into full-blown crises. All our emotions are important and valuable in the proper amounts, timing, and context.

Realize that the emotions you are feeling at this very moment are a gift, a guideline, a support system, a call to action. If you suppress your emotions and try to drive them out of your life, or if you magnify them and allow them to take over everything, then you're squandering one of life's most precious resources.

So what is the source of emotions? You are the source of all your emotions; you are the one who creates them. So many people feel that they have to wait for certain experiences in order to feel the emotions they desire. For instance, they don't give themselves permission to feel loved or happy or confident unless a particular set of expectations is met. I'm here to tell you that you can feel any way you choose at any moment in time.

At the seminars I conduct near my home in Del Mar, California, we've created a fun anchor to remind us who is really responsible for our emotions. These seminars are held in an exquisite, four-star resort, the Inn L'Auberge, which sits right on the ocean, and is also near the train station. About four times a day, you can hear the train whistle loudly as it passes through. Some seminar participants would become irritated at the interruption (remember, they didn't know about Transformational Vocabulary yet!), so I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to turn frustration into fun. " From now on, " I said, " whenever we hear that train howl, we'll celebrate. I want to see how good you can make yourselves feel whenever you hear that train. We're always waiting for the right person or right situation to come along before we feel good. But who determines whether this is the right person or situation? When you do feel good, who's making you feel good? You are! But you simply have a rule that says you have to wait until A, B, and C occur before you allow yourself to feel good. Why wait? Why not set up a rule that says that whenever you hear a train whistle, you'll automatically feel great? The good news is that the train whistle is probably more consistent and predictable than the people you're hoping will show up to make you feel good! "

Now, whenever we hear the train pass, jubilation ensues. People immediately jump out of their chairs, cheer and holler, and act like silly maniacs—including doctors, lawyers, CEOs—people who were supposedly intelligent before they arrived! As everyone sits back down, uproarious laughter ensues. What's the lesson? You don't have to wait for anything or anyone! You don't need any special reason to feel good —you can just decide to feel good right now, simply because you're alive, simply because you want to.

So if you're the source of all your emotions, why don't you feel good all the time? Again, it's because your so-called negative emotions are giving you a message. What is the message of these Action Signals?

They're telling you that what you're currently doing is not working, that the reason you have pain is either the way you're perceiving things or the procedures you're using: specifically, the way you're

communicating your needs and desires to people, or the actions you're taking.

What you're doing is not producing the result you want, and you have to change your approach. Remember that your perceptions are controlled by what you focus on and the meanings you interpret from things. And you can change your perception in a moment, just by changing the way you're using your physiology or by asking yourself a better question.

Your procedures include your style of communication. Maybe you're being too harsh in the way you communicate, or maybe your procedure is not even communicating your needs, and you're expecting other people to know what you need. This could create a lot of frustration, anger, and hurt in your life. Maybe this Action Signal of feeling hurt is trying to tell you that you need to change your way of communicating so you don't feel hurt again in the future. Feeling depressed is another call to action, telling you that you need to change your perception that the problems you're dealing with are permanent or out of control. Or, you need to take some kind of physical action to handle one area of your life so that once again you remember that you are in control.

This is the true message of all your Action Signals. They're merely trying to support you in taking action to change the way you think, change the way you're perceiving things, or change your procedures for communicating or behaving. These calls to action are there to remind you that you don't want to be like the fly who keeps banging himself against the window, trying to get through the glass—if you don't change your approach, all the persistence in the world will never pay off. Your Action Signals are whispering to you (perhaps screaming!), through the experience of pain, that you need to change what you're doing.