Positive Power:

One technique which can change your life

“Thoughts are like a virus, infecting everything around them’

Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception, 2010

Suffering: We have all suffered at some point in our lives. For many people, this suffering is transitory, and we
feel good most of the time. Some people, however, have such strong negative emotions that they spend much of
their time suffering. It might be that they primarily lose their motivation and energy and suffer from
‘depression’. Other people simply want to have more success in their life, to find someone that they love and
achieve their career goals. And there are of course a whole host of other problems that you might be suffering
from, such as addictions or relationship problems. Regardless of which one of these types of suffering you are
now experiencing, I strongly believe that there is ONE general concept and ONE technique which can literally
solve all your problems. Ok, I think I know what you are already thinking. ‘That is ridiculous Dr. Schatz!. There
is no way that ONE technique and ONE concept can change a person’s life that much. I admit that, before I
learned how this concept functioned, I would not have believed it either. In fact, I studied psychology as an
undergraduate, attended a high ranking medical school, and completed a psychiatry residency at Stanford
University Hospital, and I NEVER discovered anything as powerful as this concept. And when I myself utilized
this method, I saw its power. And the amazing thing is that this concept is actually somewhat obvious, and
fairly simple. But before I explain to you the concept and technique, let me give you a bit of background which
will be necessary before you can use of this powerful technique.

The ‘Unconscious’: You have probably heard many things about the unconscious. Many people have extreme
views about this mystery known as the unconscious. Some people believe that the unconscious directs
everything that we do, while others believe that it is a total farce. In reality, neither of these opinions is true.
Like many things in this world, the truth is somewhere in between. First, let us define what this ‘unconscious’
is. Simply put, the theory of the unconscious says that there is information in our brain which directs our
behavior, but that we are mostly unaware of. In fact, research has proven that there is indeed information in our
brain which directs our behavior, but that we are unaware of. Modern studies of decision making and thought,
for example, have documented that we take in and use information every second of every day that we are not
even aware of. Much of this information is registered in our brain BELOW the level of anything we are paying
attention to. Thus, it is recorded in our ‘unconscious’. This unconscious is one of the reasons why we might
have a feeling which seemed to ‘come out of nowhere’, one that was not triggered by anything that seemed to
be happening around you. Also residing in our ‘unconscious’ are the emotional reactions we had as children.
This is because, when we were young, our brain recorded our reaction to events, but often times did not record
the memory of the events. Thus, we might still be reacting as we did when we were a child to current events,
but we would have no idea why. The key point to take away from the above discussion of the unconscious is
that, often times your limitations and suffering are being caused by factors which are very difficult to fully
understand. When I first learned realized how difficult it was to understand the unconscious, I felt sad, because
it made me think that all the reasons why we might suffer were ‘locked in’, and that there was no hope of
changing them. That is, however, until I began to realize that you can change how you think and feel without
ever even needing to understand everything that is in your ‘unconscious’.

Cognitive Therapy: The pioneers of this cognitive therapy discovered the power of changing how you think
and feel during the 1950s and 1960s. These physicians, like most psychiatrists of the time, were studying their
patient’s unconscious. What they noticed, however, was that often times people seemed to suffer, not because of
deep hidden unconscious wishes or desires, but because their views towards themselves were extremely
negative and unfair, or ‘distorted’. They also noticed that, when people began to change their views towards
themselves, then they began to suffer less. They realized that it is not so much what is hidden in a person’s
unconscious that is important to being happy. It is becoming aware of how we are ‘talking’ to ourselves that is
responsible for feeling happy and sad. This voice in our head, which we all have, is known as ‘cognition’, and
Cognitive Therapy works on helping a person to become aware of the negative thoughts he or she is having, and
then to change these negative thoughts. Now, you might be saying to yourself ‘but my negative thoughts aren’t
distorted, they are correct!’. See, that is great, you have just become aware of that cognitive ‘voice’ in your
head! Now, let me answer that voice in your head. Interestingly, extensive research has shown that many of
these negative thoughts are JUST PLAIN WRONG! Let me explain why this might be the case. The research
has shown us that, when we perceive the world, we ALWAYS remove some information. We are not even
aware that we are going through this filtering process, because it happens automatically. Our brain does this
filtering because there is simply too much information in the world to take in. Thus, what seems to be a
‘complete’ view of the world is ALWAYS missing some information. The information which we filter out isn’t
random, either. Often, we filter out information that is not consistent with our early learning experiences. Thus,
if we learn early on that we are a "bad person", we will filter out information in our life which would indicate
that we are not a bad person. Such information will continue to be filtered out over the years until we don't even
realize that we are not seeing the full scope of "reality", only a piece of reality. This assertion may be somewhat
difficult to accept. It may seem like I am saying that you can't fully trust your own thoughts. In fact, when you
are feeling bad, I am saying EXACTLY THAT! I am asserting that the thoughts which make you feel bad are
based on a perspective which you have likely held for a long time, but one that is INCOMPLETE. Look at it
another way. There are an unlimited number of experiences that are possible to have in the world, depending on
circumstances such as where you are born, what time period you are born in, the socioeconomic status of your
family, how your parents raised you, etc. The conclusions you have drawn about yourself and your world are
based on only the reality YOU have seen. But these conclusions would be different with a different upbringing,
or if you were raised in another country. This is in fact why, in medicine, research is always done using a large
number of people, or ‘sample size’. In reaching a conclusion, it is not enough to look at one doctor’s experience
with one patient. The results may simply be specific to that patient, or that doctor’s interaction with that patient.
Studies in medicine have to have hundreds of different patients, ideally with different variables, to make sure
that the results of the study are valid for people with different characteristics. So when we draw conclusions
about ourselves based ONLY on our experience, we are making conclusions which do not take into account
many factors. When your thoughts make you feel bad, the thoughts are inevitably missing certain pieces of
information. So I would like to ask you, for a second, to accept the reality that the thoughts you are having may
not reflect the reality that is most fair to you. To illustrate this, consider a person who believes that people don't
like them. If someone does not smile at him, this person will assume "they must not like me" and will feel bad.
But if a person assumes that other people do like him, when someone doesn’t smile at him, he will assume "that
person is just having a bad day", and then the person will not feel bad. This point simply reflects the concept
that is core to Cognitive Therapy: that our feelings are often based on our thoughts, and our thoughts are based
on assumptions which are not always taking all factors into account. So I hope that I have convinced you now,
that when we are feeling sad, it is also because of the negative thoughts and conclusions we are having.
Moreover, research has also shown that most of the time, these negative thoughts are just plain wrong! These
two pieces of information alone can decrease your suffering enormously. However, there are a few other
general ideas which are important to understand before you can truly change your life.

NLP: The next major step towards secret I will share with you was discovered by Richard Bandler and John
Grindler in the 1970s. These two scientists were studying the most successful therapists of the time to
understand how they were able to be so successful in helping people to change their lives. What Bandler and
Grindler soon realized is that all of the best therapists were able to convince or 'hypnotize' people into forgetting
the limitations they thought they had. They noticed that good therapists essentially sold people on the idea that
they could achieve anything in their lives. And what the scientists found was that, when people forgot their
limitations, and began to imagine themselves in new ways, they were truly able to achieve magical results. They
used their discoveries to invent a psychological technology called Neurolinguisitic Programming (NLP). There
were three major innovations which NLP added to the power of Cognitive Therapy. First, NLP taught that it is
not just what we ‘say’ to ourselves which control our emotions; it is also the images which we ‘make’ in our
head. Try a demonstration of this principal for yourself. Remember a bad feeling you recently had. Likely, it
had an image of the situation you were in that caused the bad feelings, such as you speaking with someone you
care about and saying something you thought was silly. The situation also probably has words which go with
the negative feeling, such as ‘that was really dumb’ or ‘he really doesn’t like me'. The second, and extremely
significant discovery which Bandler and Grindler made was that they could get people to change the negative
words and images in their head, and imagine how they would feel with these new images and words, and people
would feel significantly better. It didn’t matter what ‘actually happened’ in the situation. When they got people
to think, see, and feel good things, people’s limitations would melt away, and people could accomplish
remarkable things. NLP didn’t really care what was ‘true’ and what wasn’t. As I noted in the above discussion
about cognitive therapy, I am not even sure we can ever know which of our thoughts and images about
ourselves are actually true. You think someone was looking at you and that they don’t like you? How do you
know? Probably they had a bad day. The point is that, Bandler and Grinder discovered that the secret was that
being filled with positive thoughts, images, and feelings, allowed people to achieve things which they had never
dreamed of and to live the life they always had wanted to live. But that was not all they did, which brings me to
the third major innovation which NLP demonstrated. After they had seen the negative words the person was
saying to themselves, and had the personsee the negative images the person was having, they would have their
patient have do something crucial. They would have the person change the words they were hearing to positive
ones, change the image they were seeing to a happy, successful ones, and then imagine all the good feelings that
would come with these positive words and images. They essentially said ‘I don’t care about what you think
reality is. I want you to think, imagine, and feel great!’. Although you may find it hard to believe, just changing
the way a person thought, imagined, and felt, allowed people to achieve almost anything they wanted. When the
patients practiced this new way of thinking, practiced dissociating negative images and then creating new good
images, and then feeling all the good feelings that come with those good images and words, people were in
effect ‘hypnotized’ into making those new images and feelings a part of their life. Free of the false limitations
which people had built for themselves with their negative thoughts, images, and feelings, people were happy,
satisfied, and extremely successful. Now, you might be saying to yourself ‘but putting in an imaginary idea in
my head is ‘false’, it isn’t how the situation actually went’ You may think that imagining that a person didn’t
say something mean to you isn’t ‘true’, and that they did say something mean. Many of my colleague
psychiatrists might also object to these methods described above, saying that it is ‘denying’ or ‘repressing’
things that are ‘true’. One thing I have learned in psychiatry is that there really isn’t absolute ‘truth’. Different
people have their different versions of what ‘truth’ is. We already discussed why many of your own cognitions
may be ‘wrong’. Moreover, there is also evidence that all of your (and everyone’s) memories of the past have
been ‘changed’. Our brains have deleted certain things or added certain things. So, in fact, our memories might
be the ones that are incorrect. In fact, people who are depressed often remember things in a false, negative way.
So, you might say that changing your negative memories into positive ones is just making them more truthful!
Although I, as a psychiatrist, have been trained to look at concepts of denial and repression, I have found that
one thing ALWAYS seems to be true: We are successful or not depending on how we see the world and how
we see ourselves. The reasons ‘why’ we see ourselves and the world in a certain way dosn’t really matter as
much. So, when we see the world differently, we become more successful. I believe this is a better frame for
how to live our lives than to obsess about what is ‘really’ true. So, yes, the method above is ‘repressing’ certain
things, but only so that you can more easily live the live you truly want to live.

The Secret of ‘The Secret’: So now, I have discussed three key concepts. The first is that much of our
suffering lies buried in our unconscious past, and that it is often difficult or futile to try to figure out exactly
‘why’ we feel what we feel. Cognitive therapy taught us that our feelings are linked to the thoughts we are
having, and that when these thoughts can be changed, we will feel better. NLP added that it is also the images
we have about our life, along with the words we say to ourselves, that dictate how we feel and whether we can
achieve what we want to achieve in life. NLP also taught us to use ‘dissociation’ of negative images and
‘association’ of good images to change how we feel. NLP also demonstrated that true ‘reality’ simply doesn’t
matter. NLP proved that, when we think, imagine, and feel positively, we soon are able to change our lives and
achieve anything we want. Overall, however, the concepts of cognitive therapy and NLP were mostly practiced
by people who had read about these technologies or who were therapists. That is, until the recent extremely
popular book ‘The Secret’, taught people the power of forgetting your limitations and thinking positively. ‘The
Secret’ essentially stated that there is a ‘law of attraction’ which brings positive things to those who think,
imagine, and feel positively, and negative things to those who think, imagine, and feel negatively. Though I felt
that the book ‘The Secret’ didn’t truly tell people how to help themselves think, imagine, and feel positively (as
cognitive therapy and NLP did), what the book did emphasize was that positive thoughts, images, and feelings
will bring us anything in the universe that we want. With that concept, I couldn’t agree more.

Positively Happy with ONE Technique: Perhaps you now understand why I started this book with the quote
that thoughts are like viruses. My meaning is that positive thoughts (and images and feelings) will continue to
spread through you. It will make it more likely that they will occur. And these good thoughts will spread to the
outside world and bring you good things. Unfortunately, the same relationship is true for bad thoughts, images,
and feelings. So essentially, the secret to life is to THINK, IMAGINE, AND FEEL GOOD NO MATTER
WHAT! I don’t care what you have to do (as long as it is legal and ethical) to feel good. For some, religion
makes them feel good and helps them believe in something greater. Others find psychiatric drugs balance their
moods. The point is that making sure you have this positivity in everything you do will bring you almost
anything in the world. So now I would like to share with you a brief tutorial on how to take any of those
negative thoughts, images, and feelings, and change them. By and large, it seems that people have trouble
feeling positive all the time because either they remember bad experiences in the past or they imagine bad
experiences which will happen in the future. So, let’s show you how you can use a simple technique to harness
the power of being positively happy by changing what they are thinking about.

Step # 1: First, become aware of the bad feeling that you are having. Then, become aware in that instant of both
the negative images you are having and the negative things you telling yourself. If you can, it would help that
you close your eyes and focus on your breathing. This step is important because you want to get into a
somewhat ‘trance’ like state. This will allow you to better be able to see the negative things the person is
thinking about, and to change them into positivity.

Step # 2: Picture the situation which you want to forget (either in the past of in the future). Make sure, however,
that you are picturing this image ‘dissociated’. Let me discuss the difference between a ‘dissociated image and
an ‘associated’ one. When an image is associated, it means you are seeing the image through your own eyes, the
way you are staring at this page right now. Dissociated, on the other hand, is where you SEE yourself doing
something. You see in your head the situation which is occurring, as if you were watching yourself in a movie
or as if you were floating overhead, watching yourself as an actor in the situation. Try, right now, to picture
yourself doing something, as if you were watching a movie of yourself. That is a dissociated image. When a
person imagines the dissociated image, there is less emotion and bodily feelings associated with it. When the
image is associated, there is more emotion and bodily feelings.

So, I want you to focus on watching the negative image/memory as if it was on a movie screen (and thus
‘dissociated’). This is making the image less powerful in the areas of the brain which encode memories. Right
after you are seeing the negative image dissociated, now I want you to see a whole new scene where things are
happening as you WOULD LIKE them to happen. See yourself as you want to be and watch the people around
you reacting to you in the way you would like them to act. Jump into this image and see it through your eyes.
Then, take the negative words you were saying to yourself ‘I’m such a loser’ and change them to positive,
uplifting words from yourself and the people you are now imagining around you. See clearly and with bright
colors the new images of the situation going exactly as you want it to. Finally, I want you to feel in your body
what it would feel like to have the situation go as you wanted it to go and to hear these positive words.

Now, do I think that you will be able to change a negative memory or a feared future event by doing this
process one? Definitely not! This positive power will need to be practiced. You will need to, each day, change
negative experiences to positive ones, to use this process to undo your fears, and to put positivity where your
limitations used to be. Likely, you will find like I did that this positivity will have some fairly quick positive
effects in your. And if you practice the technique of positivity over the course of months, you will see that it
will change your life completely.

Conclusion: There are so many methods people have to change their lives, from religion to different types of
therapy, to books on positive thought. This brief pamphlet is an attempt to harness what I now believe is the
secret behind all of these methods and technologies. In essence, you are limited by your thoughts (and images in
your head) and the feelings they produce. Absolute ‘reality’ about your negative thoughts and images is both
hard to verify (‘why do I think I am a bad person. Did anything really happen that proves this?’), and it is not
helpful. Whether you think it is true or not, positive thoughts, images, and feelings will bring you a positively
happy, successful life. So, as I talked about above, I hope you will begin practicing this power of positivity
every day. If you do, you will find that your life becomes more positively happy every single day.