The Strange ‘Peace”
Quick Note on the Blog
Hello and welcome to Living Right with Bill Cortright Blog. I have given this blog a lot of thought and I have decided I wanted to use it as a platform of my life’s next chapter. I have been teaching wellness and personal development for over three decades and I am going to still teach but I am going to use my podcast, The Stress Mastery Podcast, as the teaching platform. Over the last year and especially over these recent weeks I have had such a profound shift in consciousness that it has left me perplexed, confused, and in a state of Peace.
I am not sure where this will all take me? I am writing a new book that was literally given to me from the ether. Built an entire website with content, a full podcast, created a new business, all in just 5-days with just me and my son David and neither of us has any experience. All of this is happening while I am losing my lives work and the very program I had built, longtime associates, people I care about, my home of 25-years and my entire identity. Here is the kicker and the reason I am doing this life blog, my mind is quiet while everything is around me is like the tornado in the movie Twister. I am not sure if many or any people will read this blog but I am sure that I must write this for me. Its therapy for me to share my strange new life because when I tell people about it I just get a blank stare. I have no idea what or how often I will write, but I will share the good the quiet and the strange peace.
Thank you,
Bill
The Strange ‘Peace”
I have been working on myself since I was 20-years-old, weighed 278 pounds and was told that I had diabetes. I have told this story like a million times. The other piece of that story was the book I read right after I received the doctor’s proclamation, “You are diabetic and really fat”, it was “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. I was hooked from that moment on and became a personal development junkie. I have read thousands of books (ok maybe not thousands but a lot) on all types of personal, spiritual, psychological, self-improvement, every type of betterment you can think of. I have been keeping a regular spiritual practice built around meditation since the mid-nineties. It seems the harder I worked on myself the more messed up life became (stories for future blogs I’m sure).
But, over the last two years and especially the last year I really started experiencing a shift. Things came easy to me. Ideas, money, people and the love of a good woman became effortless (wife Linda for clarity). Meditations could last hours, my coaching hit new levels as I attracted the most amazing clients, my talks hit heights where I was delivering messages that I am not
sure, I really understood myself. THEN it happened the bubble burst and here is what took place.
It’s Awfully Quiet
I will not go into details as the details have nothing to do with the story (I know sounds a lot like the news). I was in a meeting where I was confronted with circumstances that would erase work that I started creating in 1984. I had spent my life developing the better mouse trap and it was being taken away. As I sat in the meeting all eyes on me I noticed the strangest thing…my mind was silent. I mean not a single thought. No F-bombs, no defending, no complaining, crying, screaming, NOTHING!
I was dismissed and headed home in traffic that resembled a mall parking lot, it was moving so slow. Again, I searched for a reaction, NOTHING. Many years ago, I developed a coaching technique to name your Ego. My egos name is Barry. Barry is somewhat an asshole with many opinions that he and I disagree with on a regular basis. Over the years, I have developed such self-awareness that I can almost immediately see when Barry chimes in. But, Barry was silent. NOT A WORD, I actually talked to him, “don’t you have anything to say?” Nothing! The entire drive home which took almost two hours my mind was silent and I was in a state of peace, bliss, calm, it’s so weird as I write this I am not sure of the words to really explain the state.
The silence continued as I went to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep so I decided to meditate. I meditated for about two-hours when it happened. The room (well inside my head) lit up with a bright light. The silence was broken with a voice, it was my voice, it said, “NOW you know what stress mastery is…its PEACE! Here is your next book. The voice (my voice) would go on and give me the entire outline for the book, “The Seven Steps of Stress Mastery” Taking you from the science to spirituality of stress management. I exploded out of bed and started writing as it just poured out.
I have been teaching about stress since 1985 when I found that it was stress that caused metabolism upset. In recent years, I tied stress into the reason we procrastinate and self-sabotage our growth. Recently, I was talking about mastering stress but had no clue what I was talking about until now.
The strangest thing is seeing the world around me. Barry is back talking but ever so slightly. My meditations are deeper and I can enter a calm state in seconds. I am stronger in the gym than I have been in 10-years (squatted 400 pounds with ease). The weirdest thing is that I feel I should be reacting to my current situation in some type of anger pattern, scream a little, bitch some, but nothing. Everyone around me is reacting and I just find it odd. Not at the reactions they are having but the reactions I am not having. Very Strange Peace indeed.
Bill
StayInspired
March 2017
