A SIMPLE BUT POWERFUL EPIPHANY
By Bill Cottringer

First of all, I feel a need to apologize for the brevity and simplicity of this article. But, sometimes the most powerful insights are so simple that we miss them even when they are right under our noses, and no amount of details seem to be effective in being able to explain them because they have to be digested by personal experience. Such is the case of the following epiphany I had after decades of personal development poking, prodding and shaping by the best of the best from the cliffs of Big Sur to Mt. Fujiyama to the Australian Outback. I certainly took in all this useful and helpful wisdom, but for some reason or another it never took in mass to get the monumental results intended. I am always wondered why and now I think I know why.

I guess all my education, training and professional experience at learning and applying all the wisdom from positive psychology finally triangulated with three major systems—The Secret, Appreciative Inquiry and The Sedona Method. This is no surprise, because they all have the same origin, creators and followers and are all based on life’s greatest truth. What is life’s greatest truth? Simply that whatever you are focusing on right now with your mind, heart, soul and body gives off energy to create the realities of those dimensions.

More simply put, there are really only two Yin and Yang energies—positive love and negative fear—and positive energy works to build positive realities and negative energy works to build negative realities. In other words, you basically get what you ask for; so you may want to be careful about what you are asking for as well as when, why and how you are asking for it. The most successful formula is to ask for the right thing in the right way at the right time for the right reasons.

Unfortunately there is probably a 95% chance to get caught up in all the nonsense that hides that 5% truth. But maybe any powerful truth is worth the time and effort to wade through the chaos to get to the simplicity on the other side. At least that has been true in my life. The more time and effort I spend into learning about and doing something, the more enjoyment I have and the better results I get.

I just finished a wall plaque for my newly born grandson, Joshua Nathanial Gilbert. The plaque reads: “Your Purpose In Life: To have fun, get meaning and do good in finding, perfecting, and using your natural talents to help create a better, more positive reality with success, joy and peace for as many people as you can.” Well, what I have found over the years is that I make the most strides in my own personal growth, when I grasp the wisdom of applying my own best advice given to others.

So if I translate this epiphany for common consideration, it would sound something like this: “I have much more power than I imagine and that power increases as I become more aware of how I use it positively or misuse it negatively. The more I use it positively and responsibly for the greater good, the more powerful it becomes in getting bigger and better positive results. So, maybe my purpose is the same as I have imposed upon grandson Joshua and the most responsible and positive way I can carry it out is to pay very close attention to what I am focusing on in my mind, heart, body and soul in regards to other people and then to begin to diminish the power of even the slightest of negative energy by building upon the positive thoughts, feelings and experiences I am having about the other person. Put another way, less on problems, conflicts, annoying differences and unmet expectations and more on what is right and good.”

There you have it in a nutshell. Is this as valuable and useful of an insight as I imagine it to be? Or is it just my own mind entertaining myself? I’d like a second opinion.


William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is author of several books including You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too and The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Live Simple Lives & People Don’t. Bill can be reached at bcottrigner.pssp.net or (425) 454-5011 for comments and questions, especially in regards to this article.