The first step that Dr. Orloff discusses is overcoming fear.  I think that is a big one.  Especially considering our current economic and political climate, we oftentimes are gripped with uncertainty that dooms and glooms us in most cases unjustifiably so.  When we live in fear we drain our cortisol levels as our amygdala is in a constant state of overdrive (read an earlier blog in this series entitled the biology of emotions to understand this concept better).  We need to take steps to free ourselves from the clutches of fear and we can take baby steps to do just that:

1.  Stop reading depressing news about the world and the economy.

2.  Stop hanging out with downers:  people who zap your emotional energy (see emotional vampires, the section we just finished).

3.  Learn to find your sources of fear and overcome them by focusing beyond them toward solutions and toward positivity.

4.  Look at your fears as a way for you to be spiritually free from them:  ”How can this fear help me develop courage, become freer?”

Besides recognizing when you are in the presence of an emotional vampire, we should recognize if we are being one ourselves.  Self awareness is a critical attribute for anyone, and that is what these blogs are about.  Rather than punish yourself and feel self pity, just make a concerted effort to change.  As you read these blogs on different types of emotional vampires, try to see if you fit the bill to any degree.  If so, just be honest with yourself and make the change.

The first type of emotional vampire she talks about is the narcissist.  The narcissist is hard wired to see himself/herself as special, a guru, and simply put better than you.  The narcissist is self-absorbed and manipulative and incapable of deep emotion.  He/she can be charming or not charming, but usually is motivated by self interest.  When dealing with a narcissist, do not try to talk down to them, or you will fail.  Stroke the ego and that way you can get around the personality fault.  Instead of saying, “Let’s go to the party”, you can say, “everyone likes you, they’ll miss you if you were not there.”  Do not get emotionally attached to a narcissist because the narcissist will most likely not provide deep emotional support for you since they are more interested in themselves.  Although the best option with an emotional vampire is to escape his or her presence, the second best is to recognize what type of emotional vampire he/she is and work to circumvent the personality faults so as not to trigger any more flagrant behavior.

The thing that struck home for me was his idea that the reason for this much torture was to weed out the weak.  He said that when someone failed, the team would go out and beat him up.  The second time the infraction occurred the guy was out of the training and sent home.  I thought about this from a business standpoint, and I have had to make hard decisions about my team when it comes to the weakest link, letting go people that just did not have the acumen, work ethic, culture, and personality to fit my organization.  I am not Donald Trump and never like letting someone go, but I realized that over and over again the individual in question was destroying the organization’s morale and credibility.  Luttrell says that the weakest link in a team will oftentimes get the team killed.  I believe that is true for almost any organization.  That may be a hard statement but it is actually quite truthful in my experience.

When I was in residency, we always had The A Team and The B Team.  I remember having some residents that I was frightened to be on-call with, not for my sake but for the patients’ sake.  I have made it a point to cull the best talent and keep that talent so that every player is an A Team, is reliable, and is talented.  I like to use the example of hair restoration.  I only have one team to do hair because quality varies too much when there are rotating teams.  Not every team member actually makes it through our version of BUD/S.  It takes a very special, dedicated, meticulous individual, who can withstand our SEAL team leader, Emina’s rigorous scrutiny.  I think when we even select friends sometimes we have “dead weight”.  Individuals who cripple our energy and spirit or who drive us toward something that we wouldn’t or shouldn’t do.  We should streamline everything in life so that we have no weakest links on any of our teams.

During his speech, I thought what lessons could I cull from this remarkable man who had such remarkable experiences that make my meager existence pale in comparison.  I wanted to take some key lessons of his life and see if I could put my own personal spin on them to help my readership.  So that is what I am doing here.

He started his talk with how he grew up in a small Texas town of Huntsville and his father telling him, “Boy, before you take from this country, you better serve it first.”  With that exhortation, Marcus and his brother decided to become Navy SEALS.  He had not even heard what that was exactly, but he knew he wanted to do it.  He trained with this ex-Green Beret, Billy Shelton, from the Vietnam era who had that always “crazy look in his eyes.”  Marcus said that when he walked up to his door the first time he interrupted the man’s dinner and was so petrified he couldn’t remember why he was even there.  Shelton told Marcus, “If you want to train with me, we start tomorrow at 04:30.”  Marcus sheepishly showed up precisely at 4:30 am the next morning to begin his pre-military exercises.  Shelton responded, “Boy, you are late.  When I say 04:30, I mean 04:15.  04:30 is when we roll not when you arrive.  Don’t let that happen again.”

I thought that was a great piece of wisdom. When I was undergoing moderator training for my EO forum group, I was told not to get there at 3:30 pm when we would start our meeting.  That means at 3:30 pm, I’m still flustered by just arriving.  I’m trying to open all of my papers to start figuring out the agenda.  I am not really ready until 3:35 or 3:40 pm.  Instead, I try to arrive 10 to 20 minutes in advance so that I am ready to roll at the appointed time.  I think when we have an important meeting, we should consider getting there a few minutes early to prepare for the meeting so that we are ready to roll both psychologically and emotionally at the appointed time.

Today, I am proud to announce a tiring (for me at least) 2-month adventure trying to rebuild a 3,000+ page website from scratch. Okay, frankly, I did not do the work.  My great web team did it.  However, I did have to look through a lot of it, guide it, edit it and write new material.  I am most proud of one element that is completely functionless, which is my home page, featuring 25 rotating branding messages that declare what I stand for and what LFP is all about.  I combined elements of nature that had compelling color, graphic quality, and relevance to the message.  I actually got the idea when searching through the Ritz-Carlton spa when I saw a beautiful leaf (I chose a different leaf for the image in question), as I almost never get ideas from other plastic surgery websites.  The blue color of the top navigation I pulled from the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong spa.  I love the regal bluish-green to it.  I was thinking of a lighter blue but you could not read the wording well in the navigation bar.  The rebranding of my color emanated from the repeated protestations a couple of years ago during my web contest to change my brown color scheme.  Accordingly, I have listened.  Come on, it only took 2 years!  The design (ahem) is all Apple. Sorry Steve Jobs, but I love Apple so this is my homage to Apple.

The function (thanks Adam and George) of this website is so much better.  My website became increasingly cluttered like a closet overstuffed with new shoes and old shoes that don’t fit.  (My webmaster, Adam, said he need both valium and propecia before he could undertake the task of redoing the site.  I thought that was hilarious.)  Here’s another analogy.  I kept adding new rooms to an old house so that nothing worked or matched.  That is the problem with a restlessly creative mind always seeking a better solution for my customers.  So, in short, I tore down the house, razed it to the ground, and rebuilt it from scratch.  I have had a lot of compliments with my past website but I certainly knew where it fell far short.  I like what Steve Jobs said when he was introducing the iPod Nano, “The iPod Mini is the world’s best-selling iPod and MP3 machine ever.  Today, we get rid of it.”  That is how I view my old site. It worked (sort of).  It was good but this new site is so much better.

What didn’t work with the old site was its navigation.  It was impossible to find anything.  Now, if you are interested, for example, in fat grafting, you go the expandable menu item under “procedures” and you have all the major videos and related information related to that topic.  If you want to learn more about chin augmentation, I have all my video diaries and journeys linked to from the chin augmentation page (well, we have a few videos that still need linking to that hopefully adam will be done with in the next few days).  If you are just searching the videos section itself, all of my 400 plus videos are organized, suborganized, and suborganized so that they are more easily cataloged and thereby found.  I hope you enjoy this behemoth labor of love and value your feedback to making it better (or if you find any glitches, which I am sure there are plenty).  Thanks for your continued patronage and support of LFP (and patience during this web transition phase)!

How do we achieve happiness?  The first thing we need to do is see happiness as a habit not as a future earning.  Many of us live life as a deferred payment plan.  We will be happy when we are in the right relationship, perfect marriage, obtain the perfect job, get better grades, have a thinner waistline, etc.  Whatever we then achieve, we will then be daunted by another problem to distract us.  Only by practicing happiness as a present emotion/condition, can we be truly happy individuals.

Happiness should not be viewed as selfishness.  We have talked about this before when we discussed the Art of Happiness a few months ago.  When we are happy, we radiate that joy to others.  When we are sad and miserable, we remain in a completely selfish state that will hurt ourselves and directly/indirectly hurt others.  We need to remove any moral appendages to happiness as a right, a virtue, as a merit.  It simply is.  We all should live in unmitigated happiness and when we do we can establish the underlying foundation and premise for our unconscious mind to flourish and for us to exercise a great degree of liberation in the practice of Psycho-Cybernetics.

To keep on filling
is not as good as stopping.
Overfilled, the cupped hands drip,
better to stop pouring.

Sharpen a blade too much
and its edge will soon be lost.
Fill your house with jade and gold
and it brings insecurity.
Puff yourself with honor and pride
and no one can save you from a fall.

Retire when the work is done;
this is the way of heaven.

I truly love the idea behind this verse.  It tells us that enough is enough.  Hording more acquisitions for the sake of doing so only leads to fear, insecurity, and pride.  It leads to fearing the loss of these acquired goods that can in turn lead us to misery.  I also like how Dyer focuses on eating.  I have eaten many times after I was sated only later to regret it both in terms of how I felt afterward and the ineluctable weight gain thereafter.  I am constantly reminded of the joy of eating just enough, wanting just enough, and being contented with everything.

How do I reconcile all of this with plastic surgery?  Easily.  I have many individuals who are obsessed with plastic surgery or become so.  They know that I will only engage in things that will help them look and feel better about themselves but not in excessive things that waste money and create unchecked boundaries of ongoing want.  In fact, I help guide them to what would be the best thing to make their external selves a reflection of their inner selves.  We have talked about that in previous blogs.  I am in love with the creative work in facial cosmetic enhancement because done in moderation and with skill and artistry, you can create a beauty that lovingly radiates to all those in their proximity.

The spirit that never dies
is called the mysterious feminine.
Although she becomes the whole universe,
her immaculate purity is never lost.
Although she assumes countless forms,
her true identity remains intact.

The gateway to the mysterious female
is called the root of creation.

Listen to her voice,
hear it echo through creation.
Without fail, she reveals her presence.
Without fail, she brings us to our own perfection.
Although it is invisible, it endures;
it will never end.

I particularly love this verse because I can relate to it so very well.  I have a tremendously creative spirit that I feel is unbounded.  I also have a great feminine sensibility about me, i.e., I am sensitive to people’s emotions and thoughts more than many of my male colleagues, peers, and friends.  I am very much attuned to my creative and my “feminine” side.  I think Lao-Tzu is focused on seeing ourselves as infinitely creative and who do not perceive boundaries to that creativity.  I recall so many people seeing my paintings that I made that adorn the walls of my office and of my building and say, “Wow, I would never feel so confident to put any of my paintings for others to see.”  I thought, “Why not?”  It never even occurred to me that someone else’s judgment of my art even mattered.

I think as children we are infinitely creative and are rewarded for our creative input.  As adults, we are so berated by other people about what is considered good or bad, that we become introspective and reclusive in our opinions and thoughts.  I am not entirely immune to this, but I exercise a profound and unfettered creativity in my artistry as a plastic surgeon (obviously with your assent and consent) as well as in almost everything that I do.  

Today when you go out look at a child and see how a child is unrestricted in his/her creative energy that is almost inexhaustible and not bound by societal dictates and constraints, by gender norms, or by arbitrary standards of quality.  Then go out today and free your creative sensibility and get in touch with your feminine nature whether you are a man or a woman.  It shouldn’t matter.  Think of how you will express your own creative energy through a vibrant individualism that radiates to others.  Live creatively.

As I have said in a past blog, I have tried to stop saying that “I am imperfect.”  It brings to light our own self abusive tendencies to play judge and jury so that we can become Victims again.  Ruiz calls the indoctrinated belief system that society (aka, the Dream) has imposed on us as the Parasite that sucks on our emotional wounds.  The language that the Parasite uses is fear.  Fear grips us and paralyzes us and distorts our relationships.

Many times we wonder when we see others, “How does she live with that abuse?”  The answer is simple:  she already is abusing herself (I’m not good enough or worthy.  I deserve this.) and therefore accepts as only natural abuse from another.  With the emotional poison that is there, she gives it back to them, and he accepts it because he is used to thinking of himself with that same level of self abuse.  Ruiz’s insight (that I have mentioned in a previous blog and is worth repeating here) is that we will only tolerate an abusive relationship as much as we tolerate our own abuse.  When that relationship exceeds our own level of self abuse, we will flee.  However, many individuals live in such a sustained level of self abuse that they can tolerate many levels of abuse and will remain in that relationship.

When we can begin to clear the storing house of false thoughts that the Parasite has made us believe, think, and really fear, we can then escape those abusive relationships because we will stop abusing ourselves.  When we begin to love ourselves without self condemnation and without judgment, we can then have the prospect of entering a healthy, loving relationship.

I conclude this 2 week series with an exercise that I found very meaningful during my EO retreat to Marble Falls a few weeks ago and that I thought I would pass along to you.  Carl Reynolds, our retreat planner (great job Carl!), put this exercise together so it does not come from Wayne Dyer’s book.  Intentionality is, believe it or not, a real word.  However, the philosophical construct behind it is quite difficult for the armchair philosopher in me to decode.  I welcome comments.  In this case, we are going to treat the word intentionality and intention the same.  My goal is simply to have you perform this exercise either in private or in this blog if you are so inclined.  I will publish my own answers below.  I hope you can skip my answers and come up with your own, then read my answers.  Here we go:

PART I

Intentionality:  ”When your dreams and your values are in alignment and your actions progress you towards your vision with constant purpose.”

Dreams:  In this exercise we are going to dream.  Take money out of the equation.  what would you do with your time?  Travel?  Volunteer?  Teach, consult, raise your kids yourself, etc.  Write down a list of those activities that you would do if you had the time…Dream big or as small as you want to…. (10 minutes)

-Teach plastic surgery

-Public speaking

-Write a lay press book

-Workout every day to get more fit

-Volunteer to mentor bright young minds

-Engage in more concerted spa retreats and continue with my personal growth

PART II

Values:  Now we are going to list our values.  Take a moment and write down at least 5 values that are core to you.  (5 minutes)

1.  Passion

2.  Integrity

3.  Work ethic/Rest- Balance

4.  Compassion/Love

5.  Happiness/Positivity

PART III

Filter:  List two of the dreams that make it through your value filter.  (2 minutes)

1.  Continue with my personal growth and achieve better balance in my life.

2.  Volunteer/mentor young minds

PART IV

At this point we now have two dreams that have made it through your filter.  Our next step is to be intentional in putting together an action plan that brings these important dreams to fruition.  But first, describe one or two times when you knew you were in alignment with your values and your purpose.  What pulled you away from that alignment?  What keeps you from getting back to that alignment?  Be specific.  (15 min.)

I felt that my staff has been in alignment with me in the past.  I felt that I was not as attuned to their needs this past year, which I have now changed.  I am part of multiple accountability groups that have weekly and monthly goals.  I fear not being the best leader that I can be.  I fear that I will not grow personally to my satisfaction.

PART V

Intentionality:  Create an action plan for one of the dreams that made it through the filter.  List at least 5 activities that will need to be scheduled so that you are intentionally working towards accomplishing that goal.  (15 min.)

1.  Schedule body rehabilitation time including monthly rolf sessions and weekly massage therapies.

2.  Dedicate one weekend day a month completely free of any thought toward work and make it entirely fun.

3.  Make sure that I have built in weekly yoga and spin classes, every single week unless I am out of town.

4.  Continue to work every week on creative ideas toward making effective blogs and hold myself accountable for what I write.

5.  To move away from constantly being near a computer every night but to be less anchored to my keyboard.  To respond to questions and thoughts no more than twice in a given night after leaving work.

I hope you enjoyed this exercise and can hold yourself accountable for your actions.  If you can’t, find someone who can.  Maybe we all can be cyber buddies to keep each other in alignment with our own intentions.