PNTV - Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer. This is the third book on which we've done a note. I've got about 10 of my favorite big ideas here. The other two books we've done on Dyer, who I love, we've done Euronia Zones, the Power of Intention and Real Magic. And I could have easily done a bunch more. I love Dyer. This is his first major book and he's always got an intense, direct style. He's kind of softened into a lot more spiritual perspectives in this one. He was just really hard hitting and just awesome. I found it really amusing and lots of funny stuff in it. And he's all about taking control of our lives. The subtitle is Escape negative thinking and take control of your life. Escape negative thinking and take control of your life. So the first way we do that, the first thing we need to do in order to do that is we need to develop a sense of self trust and self worth, self reliance. Wayne Dyer is a big fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson, as I am as well. And it didn't make any sense, did it? As I am as well, but I think you got the point. So he's a huge fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Self reliance. We do a note on Ralph Waldo Emerson. He rocks his famous essay, self reliance. All about trusting ourselves, not looking outside of ourselves for our sense of self worth. Right? Dyer says if we do that, we have other worth, not self worth. Isn't that a cool idea? So he's all about developing self reliance, having a sense of self self worth, not other worth. In the note, I talk about the fact that all kinds of great teachers have talked about this. If we're too worried about what other people think of us, we're going to give up our power. We're going to give up our destiny, really, our happiness, our joy, our fulfillment. We're not going to trust ourselves to actually do what we feel inspired to do and make some mistakes and learn in the process and deepen our relationship to ourselves. We're always going to be pandering to other people's opinions and never get a deep sense of who we are. Never have a sense of self self worth, because it will always be other worth. It's really a big idea. Seneca, classic Stoic philosopher, says, away with the world's opinion of you. It's always divided. And Marcus Aurelius, who I mention often Says, why should I care what someone thinks of me when they don't even like themselves? Why would I care what someone who doesn't even like themselves thinks of me? Doesn't make any sense. And the fact is, the people who are going to be most critical of us are the ones who have the worst relationships with themselves. So why would we care what they think of us if they don't even like themselves? Big idea. So we can talk about that for a while. Dyer says there's nothing to worry about, ever. Worry does nothing unless you can do something about it. If it's within your control, you can do something about it and you choose to take positive action. Right now, worry is totally useless. You can plan for the future, right? But worrying about what might happen is one of the biggest waste of time we can possibly have. We talk about this in the Big Leap, which I talk about in the note. Again, if you can't do anything about something, worrying about it is insane. If you can do something about it and you're not doing something about it, that's insane. So the key is identify. Can you do something about it or not? If you can't, don't worry about it. It is what it is. Byron, Katie says you're either in your business, someone else's business, or God's business. You can't control someone else, you can't control God, in which case you shouldn't worry about what's going to happen. Look at what you can do and do what you can do and then let it go with that. So that's a big idea. Dyer goes off on this. We go off on it a little bit more. In the note, Wayne also says that guilt, perhaps the most useless, erroneous zone we can play in guilt. So worrying is kind of worrying about what's going to happen in the future. Guilt is regretting what happened in the past. And he says if there's one thing that's certain, it's the fact that we can't change what happened in the past. Not going to happen. Having guilt is a silly thing. And we talk about here that in Tibetan. We learned this in the Diamond Cutter by Geshe Michael Roach. Great book. He says that in Tibetan. They don't even have a word for guilt. The word does not exist in their vocabulary. How cool is that? The closest they have is intelligent regret with a decision to do things differently next time. Isn't that cool? That's the only thing that makes sense. If you made a mistake in the past and you wish you didn't make that mistake. Okay. Have intelligent regret and commit to do things differently in the future. But having guilt about it makes no sense. Big idea. Let's not waste our energy in worry or in guilt again. Dyer talks about the importance of believing in ourselves fully. He says we want to embrace a different kind of security and looking for things that will make us secure is just a sign that we're insecure. The deepest sense of security we can have is not having X dollars in the bank. It's not having whatever other things we define as necessary for us to feel good. It's having this sense of self, the trust in ourselves to know that whatever happens, we lose our job, there's a great depression that wipes out everything. Whatever happens, we have the sense of self, the trust in self to do whatever it takes to make it through that event. That's ultimate security. Anything else that we're going after and hoarding to get is a sign of insecurity. Really cool idea. He says only the insecure strive for security. We want to really understand that we can take care of ourselves in any situation. And then of course do the prudent things of saving money and being physically prudent, etc. But do so from a place of knowing all is good, not from fear based insecurity, etc. He talks about the power and the futility of perfectionism. We talk about perfectionism a fair amount in these notes, perhaps because I am a recovering perfectionist. The Pursuit of Perfect is a great one. The Now Habit is another great book. We have notes on both of those books. This idea of perfectionism. Winston Churchill said that basically perfectionism is paralysis. If you need to do things perfectly, you're going to be paralyzed because you're never going to do things perfectly. And if you start with that standard in mind, you're just never going to take the first step. Really big idea. The next big idea is funny. 1. Musturbation. Do you musturbate a lot? If you have a lot of shoulds in your life, then you do musturbation. It's when you must do this, you should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you should do that. You're shoulding all over yourself. You're masturbating. I think that's an awesome line. Masturbating. You don't want to do that. So let's get out of the masturbating. Let's quit be driven by shoulds. And we can translate our shoulds into coulds. We talk about that fairly often. Louise Haid talks about it. Get out of your shoulds and translate it into a could. I should do this. Moves into I could do this, do that. Feel the power. Think of your shoulds. Top one or two or three shoulds. I should call so and so more often. I shouldn't have done this. And then replace the should with a could and feel the power shift. It's a really big idea, Dyer says. Look, the how we do anything is very simple. Just do it. Quit thinking about all this and all that. But if you want to quit smoking, quit smoking. Now you want to quit drinking. Quit drinking. Now you want to start working out. Do a push up there. Your working out. Just started. Your exercise program just started. Really big idea. Just do it. We talk about this again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Action cures fear when we just take positive steps in the direction of what we know to be right for us, amazing things happen, which is highly recommended. So we might end on record time. Let me do a quick little look here, see if there's anything else right here. We talked about worry. We talked about self worth versus other worth and having a sense of self trust. There's nothing to worry about. If you can't do something about it and you're not willing to do it right now, you're just wasting your energy. Guilt is a wasted emotion. Tibetan, they don't even have a word for guilt. Intelligent regret with a decision to do things differently. That's what we want to do. Believing in yourself fully when we believe in ourselves fully, we remove the word impossible from our vocabulary. We realize we can do a heck of a lot more than we ever dreamt possible. Really big idea. A different kind of security is when we realize that we can handle whatever life brings us. We don't need to hoard anything. We have what it takes to get through any challenge. Really big idea. Let's not be paralyzed by perfection, right? Let's get rid of the masturbation, change our shoulds and the coulds. And if we want to change something, just do it. So there you go. There's a quick look at some of my favorite big ideas from your erroneous zones. Hope you enjoyed and had fun and look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you.

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