The Art of Feeling Wonderful 

and Getting Anything from Life  

By Ali Sina 

2006/11/05

This article is about feeling wonderful. I wrote it for a dear friend who thinks she suffers from emotional regulation disorder (ERD) also known as borderline personality disorder (BPD) but it can really benefit everyone. Anyone who wants to learn the secret of how to be happy and how to succeed in life will benefit from it. 

First, what is a personality disorder? A personality disorder is basically a set of traits that combine to negatively affect your life. A great number of people suffer from one form or another disorder, (or a number of them) which hinders their success and happiness in life, impeding them to reach their full potential. The fact is that no one has to suffer from any disorder because the cure is so easily available. It's already within you. Feeling wonderful is an art. In this article I will tell you the techniques so you can master it on your own. Unlike other arts you can learn it at any age. Of course, the younger you are, the easier it becomes. Do not undervalue what you read because I give it to you for free. Some people charge hundreds of dollar to tell you just this in a seminar. Read it, take it to heart, and you will become empowered to transform your life. What you find here are old and proven wisdoms that have helped countless souls. Here you will find the secret of virtually all successful people. They can help you too.

BPD “is a common disorder,” says psychiatrist Dr. Richard J. Corelli, an affiliate Staff at Stanford University Medical Center, “with estimates running as high as 10-14% of the general population. The frequency in women is two to three times greater than men.”  

“A person with a borderline personality disorder” says Corelli, “often experiences a repetitive pattern of disorganization and instability in self-image, mood, behavior and close personal relationships. This can cause significant distress or impairment in friendships and work. A person with this disorder can often be bright and intelligent, and appear warm, friendly and competent. They sometimes can maintain this appearance for a number of years until their defense structure crumbles, usually around a stressful situation like the breakup of a romantic relationship or the death of a parent.”  

“The relationships of people suffering from BP with others are intense but stormy and unstable with marked shifts of feelings and difficulties in maintaining intimate, close connections. The person may manipulate others and often has difficulty with trusting others. There is also emotional instability with marked and frequent shifts to an empty lonely depression or to irritability and anxiety. There may be unpredictable and impulsive behavior which might include excessive spending, promiscuity, gambling, drug or alcohol abuse, shoplifting, overeating or physically self-damaging actions such as suicide gestures. The person may show inappropriate and intense anger or rage with temper tantrums, constant brooding and resentment, feelings of deprivation, and a loss of control or fear of loss of control over angry feelings. There are also identity disturbances with confusion and uncertainty about self-identity, sexuality, life goals and values, career choices, friendships. There is a deep-seated feeling that one is flawed, defective, damaged or bad in some way, with a tendency to go to extremes in thinking, feeling or behavior. Under extreme stress or in severe cases there can be brief psychotic episodes with loss of contact with reality or bizarre behavior or symptoms. Even in less severe instances, there is often significant disruption of relationships and work performance. The depression which accompanies this disorder can cause much suffering and can lead to serious suicide attempts.” [1] 

No Labels  

Does this mean that only 10-14% of the population has such traits? Are the rest of us okay all the time? Are we all happy and in control of our moods every day of our life? Obviously that is not the case. We all have habits and traits that we would rather get rid of. So what is the difference between a person who is “normal” and one who is affected by a personality disorder? The difference is in degree.  

I may have a couple of extra kilos that I would like to get rid of, but I do not see or call myself fat. Sometimes I do get rid of my extra weight and then, I become carefree and it comes back. Should I call myself “fat” as soon as I put on a couple of extra kilos? Exactly how many extra kilos one has to put on so we could safely call him “fat” – five kilos, ten kilos, twenty kilos, forty kilos? Who decides at what exact weight, an average person becomes a fat person?  

The truth is that there is no such thing as a “fat person”. There are just people with extra weights. Some may weigh more than others. It is wrong, therefore, to label people or ourselves, as fat.  

This is not just a question of semantics but a shift in paradigm. It is the question of how we see ourselves and this makes a world of difference. Words are powerful. They are extremely powerful. They can make us succeed, be happy and feel great, and they can also make us feel depressed, miserable and fail.  

Weighing more than necessary is a symptom of eating disorder. We can change our eating habits and add more exercise to our lifestyle and the extra fat will melt away. Losing weight is not a mystery. It is an exact science. It is the question of the number of calories that you put in your body and the number of calories that you burn. If you consume more calories than what you burn, you gain weigh. You lose it when you do the reverse. It’s as simple as that.  

Personality disorders are no different. If you suffer from any form of personality disorder, the first thing you should do is to stop labeling yourself with that disorder and then stop seeing yourself as a victim. You must accept the responsibility and realize that you are here because of the choices that you made in the past. If you have emotional imbalance, it’s because you have thought yourself into that mood. Just as an overweight person gains weight by wrong eating; if you feel depressed, anxious and have mood problems, it is because of your wrong thinking.  

What about Genes?  

Can some people be more predisposed to certain disorders than others? This hypothesis has been postulated. I am not interested to discuss whether disorders of all kind, personality[2], eating[3] or sexual[4] are genetically determined or not. Let us agree that genetics have a role to play. So what? Let us say obesity is a genetic predisposition. Children of overweight parents often turn to be overweight. Does this mean that they are doomed to be overweight? Of course not! Weight follows a mathematical equation. You eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. If you eat less calories and burn more you lose weight. This is physics. The law does not change from one person to another. Your predisposition and genes have nothing to do with it. A piece of cheesecake generates exactly the same amount of calories in everyone irrespective of their genetic makeup and metabolism. Now, a muscular and active person will burn the calories faster than a person who is not muscular and leads a sedentary life. What this means is that this person should be even more vigilant about what he or she eats.  

Diabetes is a genetically inherited disease. This does not mean that the children of diabetic patients are destined to become diabetics? They can use this knowledge to be extra vigilant about what they eat and can lead a full healthy life without ever suffering from this disease. 

Your genes may determine your traits, and traits may drive you to choose certain habits. You may have inherited traits that make you want to eat more. Your body may not tell you when you are full and you keep eating more than what you need. It is still the extra food that makes you fat. If you stop after eating just the sufficient amount of food you will never gain fat. It might be harder for you to control your appetite but it is something you can do. If you make exercise a habit, you burn more fat. Also you can be wise about what you eat. Certain foods are better than others. Being wise in what you eat can make it easy to control your appetite, remain healthy and fit. Some food do not send the signal that you are full to your brain in time and you eat a lot before realizing you are full. (I notice I can eat a lot of white rice, pasta and bread before realizing I am full, so I eliminated them from my diet. My breakfast consists of oat, oat bran, wheat germ, wheat bran and flax seeds, topped with yogurt and dressed with berries or grapes. At lunch I chop/dice 10-15 different fresh (not cooked) vegetables with doufu, (tofu) dressed with vinegar and olive oil and eat as much as I want. This takes away all my craving and I am in my best shape. As for dinner, I can often skip it or have a few nuts, almonds, pecans, walnuts, etc. Occasionally, I have a little fish with a small baked/microwaved potato. No pasta, no bread, no white rice, very little cheese! Desert?... Hmm!... I enjoy my food so much that I can't think of anything better. A couple of dates with tea makes my meal a feast. I eat as much as I want, I am never hungry and I am full of energy. Feeling healthy makes me feel better inside too. Mens sana in corpore sano.) 

Likewise, you may also have inherited traits that negatively affect your life, like pessimistic and self deprecating thinking that have become your habits. These bad habits affect your life in a negative way and make you feel depressed, anxious, nervous or angry. Even though you may be more prone to these moods, it does not mean that you cannot stop and change them. Thoughts evoke emotions and affect the moods. Just as anyone is in control of what to eat, we are also in control of our thoughts. As you must be wise about what to eat, you must also be wise about what to think. Thoughts are food of the mind. Take good care of your mind by feeding it uplifting, healthy and positive thoughts. Every junk food that you ingest affects your health. Likewise every negative and junk thought impairs your mind. Mental health is also an exact science. You put garbage in, you get garbage out.  

The good news is that thoughts are the only things that are absolutely in your control. If you are put in jail, you have no control over what to eat. Sometimes you may live in a country where you may not find the right food to eat. However, you are in control of your thoughts no matter what happens to you or where you live. No one can control your thoughts but you. It costs you nothing to think happy and positive thoughts. So why feed your mind with negative thoughts that make you feel miserable, lower your self esteem, cause personality or other forms of disorders and impede you from reaching your full potential? 

The other day I was talking with my mom on the phone and she complained that she is becoming forgetful. I told her she should exercise her mind, like solve crosswords, puzzles, etc. She said, she spends most of her time doing house chores that are routine work and she knows that it is not good for her. I said this is like someone hitting herself with a stick on the head and complaining that it hurts. If you know something is not good for you, why do it? This is the problem with most people. We often know some of our habits hurt us and yet we continue doing them.   

You can stop being depressed, anxious, nervous or angry at any time you choose. If not, then why an angry person, who seems to be totally out of control, suddenly starts smiling and acting cool when someone important, in front of whom he wants to keep up the appearance, walks into the room? It is because despite his apparent total lack of control, he knows very well, when it is not convenient to be angry. People, who claim to be swayed by their emotions, know the limit. They stop when they sense danger. Why suicidal people give up that thought when they think about their children? They are not fool or crazy. They only act that way because this is for them a way to get attention. The truth is that we are in full control of our emotions at all times.

Habits Can Change  

The good news is that we can change our habits. We are in control of our habits. How habits are formed? Habits are formed through repetition. If you do something enough, eventually it becomes a habit. If you want to change a habit, do something different and repeat it so much until it becomes a habit.  

Thoughts produce emotions. Positive emotions can bring us happiness, success, wealth, love and anything we are capable of dreaming, while negative emotions can destroy us completely and obliterate our true potential in life!   

The challenge is to make positive thinking a habit, so it can create in us positive emotions. Feeling wonderfully starts with thinking positively.  

Body’s Own Drugstore  

Some may object and say that most personality disorders are treated with medication and this proves that they are biological.  

Medication is needed when the disorder become too sever. This is true even in the case of overeating. If you are too obese, doctors may decide to operate you because your life could be in danger. This does not prove that the obese had no control over the amount of food that he or she consumes and that obesity is an unavoidable disease. Likewise, when you have debilitated your brain to the extent that it no longer does what it is supposed to do, you may need drugs to feel better. But let us find out why some people feel good and others feel bad in the first place.  

One function of the brain is to make us feel good. The brain does this by releasing certain feel good chemicals called endogenous opioids.

An experiment that studied chemical activity in the brains of human volunteers, while they experienced sustained pain, showed that the brain produces its own natural painkiller.

Researchers from the University of Michigan Health System and School of Dentistry induced sustained pain in the volunteers and simultaneously monitored the activity in their brain with brain scan. The study found that the onset and slow increase of jaw muscle pain over 20 minutes caused a surge in the release of the chemicals. It also found that the flood of those chemicals coincided with a reduction in the amount of pain and pain-related emotions the volunteers said they felt.  

This is an amazing discovery. What it shows is that the brain is capable of producing the chemicals that make us feel good. “This result gives us new appreciation for the power of our brain's own anti-pain system, and shows how brain chemistry regulates sensory and emotional experiences,” says lead author Dr. Jon-Kar Zubieta,[5]

Opioids also play a role in feelings of pleasure and reward, and in responses to stressful situations. This is exactly how drugs, both the drugs of abuse and synthetic pain medications, affect the brain.[6]

This means that all we have to do to feel great, is to trigger our brain to release the wonderful feel good chemicals. You can also use drugs or medications to get the same effect. The problem with these exogenous painkillers is that they impair the brain and reduce its capacity to produce its own natural endogenous opioids.  

The Greatest Miracle of All  

What can make the brain release these chemicals that make us feel good? How can we open the door to this pharmacy and grab what make us feel wonderful?

For centuries, physicians had known the power of placebo. They made their patients swallow sugar pills or injected in them distilled water and the symptoms disappeared. How can that be possible? How can a disease go into remission after injecting water into the veins or ingesting a dummy pill with no medicinal effect? The answer is in thinking. Interestingly, when both the patient and the physician believe in the power of the medicine, it works even better than when only the patient thinks the medication is real.  Skrabanek and McCormick, in Follies and Fallacies in Medicine write: “The physician's belief in the treatment and the patient's faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy that is almost guaranteed to produce an improvement and sometimes a cure.”[7]  

How does the brain perform this stunt? Does this mean that it is all in our head? Can we feel better and even cure ourselves if we simply believe that we are getting better?  

The answer is yes. Believing that we are getting better triggers the brain to release the endogenous opioids and these are the chemicals that the body uses to heal and to feel better. Isn’t that amazing? The cure to all our ailments is in our head and the key to that is in thinking positively. What can be easier than that? 

A placebo (Latin for "I shall please") is fake medicine. It is only a sugarcoated starch pill and yet it has curative power. Placebos have been curing people for thousands of years. Most of the medications used by our ancestors are found to have had no medicinal power. Yet they worked because people believed in them. Now we make fun of snake oil, unicorn horn powder and dragon bones, but if they did not have any effect, why would people keep buying them for so many centuries? Even fake surgery worked because of its dramatic and strong placebo effect. The shaman would pretend cutting open the body of the patient with his bare hands, dipping his hand into his abdomen and extracting something that looked like black clot, (which was of course chicken liver that he had hidden somewhere prior to the operation) while the patient was fully awake. Then the cut would heal miraculously and the patient walked out of the operation room feeling great and in many instances cured. This is also true in faith healing. In an overly charged atmosphere, the believers are mesmerized by a charismatic preacher who convinces them that they are cured, and they throw away their canes and start dancing on the stage relieved from their pains. These are not staged shows or paid actors. What is happening is real. These are genuine people who actually get better or cured and start walking even if they could not do it for years. Yes, there is a miracle happening. But the miracle is happening in the human brain. It’s the power of autosuggestion that makes the miracle happen. What you have between your ears is the greatest miracle that this universe has produced. YOU are the miracle!

In 1944 a surgeon named J. Bruce Moseley was asked to perform fake surgery on a group of his patients. At first reluctant, but eventually he was persuaded to do it in the name of science to find out the mind-body connection. Patients were wheeled into an operating room at the Houston Veterans Affairs Medical Center, draped, examined and anesthetized. Moseley would stab the patients' knees with a scalpel – to make it feel and look real, there had to be incisions and later, scars – but that was it. No surgery was performed. And yet, all patients recovered and reported feeling no pain in their knee months after the fake operation. [8]

“That operating-room fakery should exert a therapeutic effect on a patient is a remarkable notion,” Writes The New York Times. “And yet it may be that the symbolic armature of surgery – the shedding of blood, the cultural prestige of surgeons, even the scars that call to mind a dramatic act of healing – is itself a powerful force in recovery. It may be that ‘placebo surgery’ isn't such an oxymoron after all.”[9]

Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut has shown that the effectiveness of clinically prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac is mostly placebo effect. He conducted a test on 2,318 patients who had been randomly assigned to either antidepressant medication or placebo in 19 double-blind clinical trials. He observed that the inactive placebos produced improvement that was 75% of the effect of the active drug.[10]  “The critical factor,” says Kirsch “is our beliefs about what's going to happen to us. You don't have to rely on drugs to see profound transformation.”[11]  

Doctors in one study successfully eliminated warts by painting them with a brightly colored, inert dye and promising patients the warts would be gone when the color wore off. In a study of asthmatics, researchers found that they could produce dilation of the airways by simply telling people they were inhaling a bronchiodilator, even when they weren't. Patients suffering pain after wisdom-tooth extraction got just as much relief from a fake application of ultrasound as from a real one, so long as both patient and therapist thought the machine was on. Fifty-two percent of the colitis patients treated with placebo in 11 different trials reported feeling better – and 50 percent of the inflamed intestines actually looked better when assessed with a sigmoidoscope. [12] *    

The power of autosuggestion can also be used in a negative way with devastating results. In July, 1989, in a summer camp in Florida, 150 children were served a prepackaged lunch. One girl complained that her sandwich did not taste right. She felt nauseated and after coming back from the restroom reported to have thrown up. Others began to complain that their stomachs hurt too and that the sandwiches really did taste funny. The supervisor, taking the side of the caution, announced that the food maybe poisoned and that they should not eat it. Now that their suspicion was confirmed by the authority of an adult, the children really felt bad. A number of them described having headaches, tingling in their hands and feet, and abdominal cramping.   

Between 2 to 40 minutes after eating, 63 (42%) of the children age 4-14 felt sick. More than 25 of them had vomited. The attack rate did not differ by age, but was greater for girls 7 to 3. Ambulances were called and all the children were sent to three different local hospitals.

However, clinical evaluation was normal for all. Over 3,000 similar prepackaged meals from the same caterer were served in the same area of Florida that day. No other person outside this group reported any similar symptoms. Unopened meal samples tested but no bacteria or pesticides were detected. Food processing and storage techniques had been faultless.[13]

This episode shows the amazing power of human mind. It proves that we can cure ourselves or make ourselves sick merely by thinking. It also shows that perhaps girls are more suggestible than boys. On the bright side, this means women are more apt for self transformation. The above is an example of mass sociogenic illness (MSI) and a live testimony to the amazing power of human brain.

Why America is No. 1?

America is the greatest nation of the world. Whether you like it or not, this is a fact. This did not happen by accident. This is the result of a long-standing American tradition of self-help, and concentrating on overt and positive rather than covert and negative feelings. “This tradition,” writes the site of The National Library of Medicine “had consistently focused attention on proactive ways people could become more positive and optimistic about life, master their moods, and fix their physical ills without taking medications. People could align their thoughts and constructively adjust their attitudes. Because mind and body were assumed to be closely interconnected…it was taken for granted that harmonizing one's emotions in a positive way would, unquestionably, improve one's physical well-being.”

“This American self-help tradition first developed in New England , where it was tied in with a variety of philosophical and religious currents. It spread quickly to other parts of the country, as evidenced by Julia Anderson Root's Healing Power of the Mind (first published in San Francisco in 1884) and Albert Vernon's Correspondence Course of Instruction in Psychiatrism.”

“Medically-trained Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James took an active and supportive interest in what he called ‘The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness’ which, he reported in 1902, ‘has recently poured over America and seems to be gathering force every day.’[14] James claimed that ‘mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons.’”[15]

Self-Help books gave the people a sense of empowerment. They tapped into the unlimited resources of their brain and they reached out for success. “John Kearsley Mitchell's Self Help for Nervous Women and Charles Fremont Winbigler's How to Heal and Help One's Self are just two examples of the literally hundreds of books, manuals, and magazines that were published in the early decades. Emile Coué's technique of ‘autosuggestion,’ according to which patients affirmed to their own image in a mirror that ‘Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better,’ was just another, mildly hypnotic self-healing ritual which became a national fad in the early 1920s.[16] The creation of Alcoholics Anonymous in the thirties as a network of self-help groups drew from these same sources.[17] By the 1940s the self-help movement took on an increasingly secular, more psychological and less religious tone.[18] Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, and Thomas Harris's I'm OK---You're OK were later representatives of the genre, as was the "Laughter is the Best Medicine" feature in Reader's Digest. The emphasis on the positive role of upbeat emotions has been continued recently in Norman Cousins's many books and articles, even though Cousins rested his self-help advice more heavily on medical authority than did most of his predecessors.[19]

Success and failure, health and sickness, joy and depression, riches and poverty, are all in your head. It is how you look at things. Do you see the glass half empty or half full? That is all there is to it. This is the key to your success or happiness.

Mingle with Positive People

Both negative and positive thinking are contagious. That is why you should surround yourself with people who are positive and upbeat, and shun, as much as possible, those who are not and are resistant to change. If negative people don’t want to lift a finger to improve, they will certainly pull you down. They have made their choice; let them suffer the consequence of their choice. They cling to you and want you to be their weeping shoulder. All they can do is pity themselves and all they want you to do is to agree with them. Try to help them but if they do not want your help, leave them because they will drag you down to the pit of miseries that they have put themselves in. You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped. You can’t and must not love anyone more than they love themselves.

After the defeat in Vietnam, then after Carter made America look weak by letting the Islamists take over Iran, and after his failure to rescue the Embassy personnel who had been taken hostage in that country, the Americans were feeling low. At this time, came along a positive thinker named Ronald Reagan who audaciously proclaimed “America is No. 1”. His enthusiasm was contagious. He made everyone confident and feel good about their country again. His optimism enkindled others, who strove to improve their lives and the entire nation rose from the ashes to one of the most glorious eras of its existence. Meanwhile, people of other countries laughed and dismissed Reagan as a cowboy. A few years later, when America became the undisputed superpower of the world, it was the turn of the Americans to laugh. Communism fell on its own, but it would be shortsighted to overlook the fact that the success of the American freedom exposed further, the failure of its communist rival, the Soviet Union, and precipitated its demise.

Yes, enthusiasm and positive thinking are contagious, just as negativity and pessimism are. If you have faith in what you do and you are enkindled, not only you inspire others, you also attract other positive and successful people. Success breeds more success.

The Force is Blind

The universe does not recognize good or bad. It recognizes force. All forces produce result. If you strike with a hammer, you generate a lot of concentrated force on a small area. This force could be used to hammer a nail and build a house (good use of force) or to smash your finger or someone else’s head (bad use of force). People who are failure, unhappy and depressed use the same energy that those who are successful use. The difference is that they use it in a destructive way. It does not take more energy to become successful. All it takes is to direct your energy in positive thoughts. 

Of course there are also those who just keep hammering on nothing. They spend the same energy but produce nothing. Life goes by and nothing is achieved. They have no goals and no plans. They come to this world confused and go even more confused. Their lives is spent killing time, until there is no more time left to kill and it's time to go. 

A life that has no goal, is a life with no achievements. A life with no achievements, is a life with no satisfaction. A life with no satisfaction, is not worth living. 

Each Person is Unique

The key to our success and happiness is in our head. The cure to our mental sanity is in our own brain. We were all given potentials to succeed at birth. Of course, we are not created all equal. Each person has a different potential. Nonetheless, we all can succeed in our own potential. You may not have the same talent that Mozart had, but you have other talents that he did not have. The challenge is to find your own talents and develop them.

All vehicles are not made equal. A sedan cannot go where a 4-wheel-drive vehicle can go and neither one of them can carry as much load as a truck does. This does not mean one is superior to others. It means they are made for different purposes. We humans are also made differently. So it is foolish to compare ourselves to others. Each one of us is unique. We must find our own potential and succeed in our own capacity.

What happens when you compare yourself with others? You either find yourself better or worse. This will lead you to feel either superior, which inflates your ego leading to narcissistic personality disorder or makes you feel inferior, leading to low self esteem, borderline personality and a host of other personality disorders. In any case you are the loser. Instead of comparing yourself with others, try to make your today better than your yesterday and your tomorrow better than your today. The only person you should compete against is yourself because you are unique. Understanding this truth is the foundation of good self esteem. You become comfortable with yourself and content of who you are. All tensions will disappear because there is only you and your unlimited potentials. 

What if a person is handicapped, like being blind, deaf or paraplegic? Aren't these true impediments to their success? No! Nothing is an impediment. Helen Keller, became deaf and blind at infancy. Despite that she helped to set up the American foundation for the blind and toured the world giving public speeches through her interprets communicating with touch alone. She inspired millions of people.    

Steven Hawkins is paraplegic. He has battled against the disabling effects of motor-neurone disease that has condemned him to wheelchair and unable to speak. Despite that, he has pursued his scientific work with the aid of computer technology and has become the greatest scientific mind alive, occupying the seat once occupied by Newton. Helen Keller, Steven Hawkins and many other physically handicapped people have proven that the only debilitating handicap is what we impose on ourselves.  

Owning the Responsibility  

To keep a car going smoothly and for a long time you need to take care of it. What will happen if you neglect changing the engine oil regularly or don’t maintain the car properly? It deteriorates and soon it will stop working. Then you have a defective car. Then you cry victim claiming your car does not run properly and that you need understanding and compassion. That is nonsense. You don’t need compassion. You are responsible for what you did to your car and only you must pay the consequences.  

Our body, which includes our brain, is our vehicle to carry us during our life. If we fail to nurture it properly it breaks down. If you eat junk food and don’t exercise, you end up having high cholesterol and poor health. If you suffer as the result you have no one to blame but yourself. When you were mindlessly munching on that garbage food, you should have thought of these days.  

The same is true about how to take care of your mental health. If you feed your mind with negative and destructive thoughts, it will eventually break down. Then you will have symptoms of all sorts of mental and personality disorders. Borderline personality disorder is the direct result of low self esteem. More women than men are affected by this disorder. Often, but not always, it is caused by prolonged sexual abuse at childhood. It is not the abuse itself that causes the problem. It is the feeling of shame associated with it that causes it. However, one does not have to be sexually abused to develop low self esteem. Being harshly criticized, yelled at, or beaten, being ignored, ridiculed or teased, being expected to be "perfect" all the time and/or experiencing failures in sports or school can also result in low self esteem. Children do not have enough rational capacity to interpret these abuses and they instead blame themselves. But there is no excuse for one to continue in that trait when they grow up. Then it becomes their responsibility to build their self esteem through rational thinking, autosuggestion and repetition.  

Unlike a car, our body and mind renew themselves constantly. You can replace the damaged parts in your body and mind with healthy parts. How? By thinking positively! You can improve your health, both mental and physical, and you can improve your life simply by thinking positively.  

“What you focus upon expands,” says Dr. Asoka Selvarajah. “There is ample evidence that the universe responds directly to thought. Thoughts are real, and they directly create the reality you choose to live in. In short…What you focus upon expands. If you concentrate your mind on the negative, you will get more of it. Some people are stuck in the mistakes and regrets of the past. Guilt and regret hold them down. As a result, they are trapped by the past and become incapable of facing the future with a fresh attitude. They bring past mistakes into the present and then into the future.” [20]  

What you focus upon expands. This is a good mantra to repeat so you can take control of your thoughts and not let them control you.  

Mastering the Art of Feeling Wonderful  

Take control of your thoughts and you have taken control of your destiny. How to replace negative thoughts with positive ones? Through repetition! Repletion, like drops of water on stone will eventually reshape your thoughts and one day you will wake up to find yourself full of hope, joy and happiness. These are the attitudes that you need to succeed in life and have everything you want. 

Hope is the greatest treasure we humans have. Dante, in his epic journey, passes through the Gate of Hell, on which is inscribed “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.” “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” This is the most accurate description of hell. Hell is where there is no hope. 

The problem with those who succumb to negative thoughts and eventually suffer from low self esteem that could result in various forms of disorders is that they lose hope. This is the greatest tragedy, because then they stop seeking improvement. They give up and resign to their self imposed fate, erroneously believing to be less than others and not have what it takes to succeed. Thus the dire future that they envision becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. What they focus upon expands.  

Psychologists Kruger and Dunning say: “Not only do [the incompetent] reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.”[21]  

Feeling wonderful is an art. This is an art that should be learned at childhood. Sometimes people fail to learn it. There could be many reasons that may cause that failure, but the main reason is that they have made wrong choices. Of course circumstances influence us and make it easier for us to make certain choices, but the bottom line is that we make those choices. We are responsible for the choices that we make and where we go in life is determined by us.  

They can put you in jail and fetters, take away all your freedoms, but one thing no one can take away from you is your freedom of thoughts. So stop blaming the world and the circumstances and take responsibility for your life. If you are suffering today, if you are unhappy and depressed, or if you have been diagnosed with any form of personality disorder, you are the one to be blamed. You made wrong choices.  

However, the past does not determine the future. At any moment, you can change your thinking and start harboring happy, positive an uplifting thoughts. Human brain is the greatest miracle of the universe and you are in full control of yours. This is an awesome power in your hands. Don’t let it go to waste. Use it properly and reap the benefits. Change your thoughts, replace the negative thoughts with healthy, positive ones and watch the miracle happen. Every thought counts. Every positive thought empowers you more and every negative and self deprecating thought debilitates you further. You can change your life by changing your thoughts. And remember: mountains will move aside to make way for one who is determined.     

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