I'm still doing it

[mkultra]

FROM HOMER

3. Act As If Everything Is Perfect
The wife is hostile. “You can’t see the kids except once a month. That’s all I want. You’re
not good for them. I just want you to see them once a month.” So the father is threatening
court action and he’s all upset. He doesn’t have the money to pay to attorneys for all this, but
he’s torn between being depressed and being angry. I said, “I want you to act as if seeing the
kids once a month is perfect. That it gives you more privacy and more freedom to do other
things.”

The wife in this kind of situation always wants the opposite of what she thinks the husband
wants. So then when he acts like he’s perfectly happy, all of a sudden she begins pushing the
kids on him. This is what psychologists have called “negative suggestibility.”
I remember using hypnosis years ago. A woman’s lying on the couch and I’m suggesting,
“Your right hand and right arm are getting light like a feather.” And after about 5 minutes of
that, the hand usually floats up, and her hand’s not moving at all. So I say, “Are you feeling
anything in your right hand and right arm?” She says in kind of a sleepy voice, “My hand’s
getting heavier.” The very opposite from what I’m suggesting. I said, “Good. Your right
hand and your right arm are getting heavier and heavier,” and her hand floated up.
I use this technique with husbands, because people tend to value independence — the idea of
independence. They don’t know what the hell it is, but they want it. So they define
independence the way a maladjusted 15-year-old does. “If I can spit at the principal or the
teacher or my parents, that proves how independent I am.” So they define independence as
rebellion.
Now this takes advantage of the wife’s urge to rebel, and it frustrates her neurosis. It
frustrates her desire to fight, because the husband takes away some of her excuses for fighting
with him.
I remember the man that started “Dare To Be Great.” A long time before he became a multimillionaire,
he was going through bankruptcy and they were picking up his furniture because
he couldn’t make the payments on it. Well, he used this technique of acting as if everything is
perfect. “Isn’t this great?” he said. “I don’t have to make any more payments on that
furniture.” And it worked for him.
This acting like everything is perfect forces the husband, in this case, to act rationally,
maturely, and forces him to stop exaggerating. We normally exaggerate the bad and we
normally exaggerate how desirable our mate is if we’re losing our mate. We act as if she’s a
goddess and is perfect and so forth. I don’t care if the man’s in Connecticut or California, it
doesn’t make any difference, when he’s being divorced, he fills the session with complaints
about his wife. Everything is “she” from the moment the conversation starts. He says, “Well,
she…” I’m supposed to know who that is. “Nothing is happening because she hasn’t called.
Nothing is happening.” And when he talks about her, every single thing is bad.
He doesn’t talk about how sweet she is or how logical or what a good mother she is. He’s just
constantly talking about how bad she is. She’s so unfair. She’s so illogical. She’s so selfish.
She won’t communicate. And at the same time, he’s feeling depressed.
So I say to him, “Here you are standing in this big supermarket, and you’re holding an apple.
And you’re telling me over and over that three-fourths of the apple, if not more, is totally
rotten. And you’re going to have to put it down and pick up another apple that might be good.
And you’re crying? What kind of sense does that make?” And he sees it.

So we are normally and naturally masochistic. We’re normally and naturally focusing on the
bad and exaggerating the bad. That’s not unusual. That’s popular. That’s what people do.
This idea of acting as if every detail in the situation is perfect goes against the habits. A
person really has to use their head to do this.
Did you ever stop to think that in everything that works, we use our head? Our outer space
program is working, because we use the scientific method. We use our head. People are
living longer and healthier than ever before, because of the medical profession and nutrition.
Half of the marriages are ending in divorce, and most of the rest of them just don’t have the
guts or the money to get out. So we’re failing all over the place. Most love relationships are
short-term. They burn out. Why? Because we’re following our feelings, not using our head.
If you want something to work, use your head. But our feelings are spoiled brats. They want
to choose the goal and the method. They want to go to London, England by horseback. And
they insist on London, England. They say, “No, no, I don’t want to change my goal. I want
this particular one back. She’s selfish as hell, but I’ve got to have her.” And they want to
achieve the goal by criticizing or complaining or arguing, in spite of the evidence that that
always pushes them further and further away. So we’re not using our head.
So this is a brand new idea. Use your head in your personal life? Oh my goodness, that will
make me an unfeeling person. No, it will make you a feeling person with happy feelings,
rather than depressed feelings or hurt feelings. And it works. It works over and over and over