Do you want to be right or be happy?

All rights reserved © 2014, 2019 Louis Antonio Abate, D.C.

Will your last breaths in this earthly plane be filled with regret that you weren’t joyous more often; and, how do you get there?

These are the questions I was pondering after watching Italy lose to Costa Rica in today’s World Cup match. I was in an Italian Restaurant in NoHo with about 150 other fans of Forza Azzurri. Each time we witnessed the fouls committed by the Costa Rican team we were angered. By the time the clock ran out I literally was shaking with anger. Or maybe it was rage.

Why was I so angry? I wasn’t playing the game. It wasn’t that I had lost a bet.  Was it national pride? Was it the ‘Field Effect’ of being around so many disappointed fans of the Italian team? I had no direct evidence that I could point to as to why I was feeling so angry.

I walked to the subway, replaying over and over the opportunities Forza Azzuri missed, the fouls committed by the Costa Rican team and at each instance I was getting more and more righteous.

I wondered how often do I do this in my life, and why do I do this?

How often do you do this in your own life?

While on the subway I recognized that the anger I was feeling was really masking the sadness and upset I was feeling.  I was sad—not so much that Italy lost; I was sad that I witnessed a team fight so hard and they couldn’t get ahead. I was then saddened realizing all the times in my own life where I had felt like I struggled to get ahead only to realized I did not get what I had hoped for in the end.

Our nerve system has evolved a pretty nifty survival mechanism called the Fight-or-Flight response. This response kicked into high gear and took me from the feelings of sadness, grief and hopelessness and moved me into anger. After all, anger is an emotion of a higher vibrational frequency than sadness.

Anger gives us certainty. Certainty that I AM RIGHT, or more importantly YOU ARE WRONG!

This sureness can even spawn and motivate action. Actions we wouldn’t have otherwise taken if we stayed sad and upset. After all, what feels better—being depressed or being angry?

A dear friend of mine had been having problems with people vandalizing her lawn and garden. It was something that she and her husband would chalk up to drunk teenage shenanigans; something they would just have to live with. After all, they reasoned, they innately knew this might be a problem when they bought the house so close to the high school.

Last month, after witnessing yet another group vandalizing their property her husband was so enraged that he confronted the vandals. She, feeling angered that her husband may have put himself in harm’s way, went out to protect him.  Actions they never would have taken had the anger not been allowed to be expressed.

Anger, rage, fear—emotions our society and culture have told us have no place in our experience can actually save our lives.

I have had a score of opportunities to work with patients who were undergoing treatments for cancer. Each one told me they had to be grateful for the cancer, be at peace with the cancer, be kind to the cancer. Isn’t this the prevailing myth in the culture?! My response to each of them was, instead of being nice, kind and grateful to the cancer, they needed to enraged that they had cancer. Enraged that they might die. Angry at how much time, energy and resources cancer was stealing from them. And that if they didn’t they would surely die.

The anger would actually kick the immune response into gear to locate the cancer cells and kill them. It would motivate new actions so that the patient could feel things they ordinarily would not have and reorganize to a new and higher baseline state—one that can recognize where a cancer cell is hiding. Without it the cancer is allowed to grow because the immune system isn’t called to action.

How do you get to live a joyous life? I stared out by asking if you wanted to be right or to be happy. I would venture a guess that most of you want to be happy. Yet, you are stuck in being right—or pointing out how someone else is wrong.

A joyous life is not one that is devoid of stress, hardship, or “negative” emotions. It is one that is full of those things AND more! It runs the full spectrum of human emotion and experience.

One of the easiest ways to begin having a joyous life is to apply the strategies of EpiHealing protocols of NetworkSpinal and Somato Respiratory Integration you can extract from your life experiences the wisdom necessary to lead a fully examined life. The strategies that you will learn will allow you to discover those areas of life experience that were hidden under the carpet because your body just needed to survive. You can then transform those experiences. No longer will your body ignore what is happening it will expertly learn how to deal with life’s stress and transform it into fuel for explosive growth!

One of my clients had lived a life of complete fear of everyone and everything—to the point where I had to first meet her in her home. She was afraid of germs, strangers, subways, taxis, global warming, invaders from outer space. After working with her for several months she began to venture out of her home (something she hadn’t done since her husband died 10 years prior). Several months later she was taking in Broadway shows and pre-theatre dinners with friends. Now, the last email I received, she had done over 15 skydiving jumps, and was on her way to go zip-lining through the jungles of Costa Rica!

You may say that was just her, that this will not apply to you. I can assure you that after 20 years of practice, working with thousands of people around the world, this is not an uncommon story.

Imagine how your life could be different if the fears, righteousness, and stress of past experiences was unbound and used as fuel for growth and evolution.

Imagine what your life could be like if you were able to experience life as a wild, spontaneous adventure without a story holding you back. Or, if you were able to learn how to transform any painful experience—be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, and on the other side of it experience joy and wisdom.

Now imagine if these were your last breaths on Earth—would you be excited that you had a joyous life, or glad that you had one of self-righteousness?

As I walked away from todays soccer match I began to employ the same strategies that I teach you. As I did I was able to fully experience the anger, the sadness, and the disappointment without any attachment to a story, and without the need to make it better, or make it go away. By doing so it transformed into joy.

Joy that I was able to Be.

If you would like to know more about EpiHealing™, NetworkSpinal™, Somato Respiratory Integration™, or would like to begin discovering how you can be joyous in spite of life’s circumstances call Dr. Abate at 646-945-7370 or visit www.illuminarewellness.com