About Lifeforce
Andrew John Harrison | Anjou MacPherson - Jan 15 2002

 

Lifeforce is one of the most misunderstood and little-known areas of life. And yet lifeforce alone determines many of the aspects of your life, from your level of success, happiness and potential failure. The French word for lifeforce is élan vital.

When you are feeling down, lethargic or depressed -- your available lifeforce is low. When you are feeling "in the zone," everything is going right, you feel serene, calm and at peace -- your available lifeforce is at a maximum.

Your lifeforce is the purest, essence of who you really are. It is YOU.

When you have all of your lifeforce available, you are FULLY ALIVE, fully aware, healthy, vital, at cause over your life and operating at a very high level of mastery.

When your lifeforce is trapped, suppressed or otherwise unavailable to you, you are NEARLY DEAD, partially unconscious, at effect in your life and operating at a very high level of incompetence.

All of life can be measured on a scale from FULLY ALIVE at the top to NEARLY DEAD at the bottom (in fact DEATH is the bottom of the scale.)

Most of us fluctuate somewhere from the top to the bottom, throughout the day, from day to day and year-to-year. On average we spend most of our time in one particular place or zone of the scale.

So, what makes the difference? How can we become more FULLY ALIVE? What traps and suppresses our lifeforce?

That is the focus of this section...

What is Lifeforce?
Lifeforce is the universal animating energy that is in all living things. It is the purest, essence of who you really are. It is YOU.

It is that immaterial force that maintains all living things and adds that vital spark that is LIFE.

Lifeforce is composed of a number of different characteristics, components, qualities and can be measured in units. These units contain love, awareness, knowledge, attention, intelligence, intention, vision, memory, energy, polarity, magnetism, emotion and cause.

It is the FLOW of lifeforce that manifests itself as your mood level, or emotional tone. The slower the velocity of flow, the lower your mood level; the lower your mood, the less you can get done or accomplish. The higher your mood level the more productive and happier you are.

Lifeforce flows in one of two directions; towards or away from. Thus we have positive and negative lifeforce.

Your lifeforce is your basic power source, your energy, your dynamic power. Therefore your power is determined by the quantity and quality of lifeforce available to you.

Communication is the primary method of focusing and directing flows of lifeforce. Therefore, your ability to direct, focus and harness your lifeforce is totally dependent on your ability to communicate.

With all of your lifeforce units available, aligned and focused in present time you would be a fully realized, self-actualized human being. There isn't anything you can't be, do or have.

What Are Emotions?
Emotion stands for Energy in Motion or in other words it is the energy that creates our motion. It is the fuel that moves us. Just as there are positive and negative flows of lifeforce, there are positive and negative flows of emotion.

Emotions range from feeling nothing or numb, all the way to feeling fully alive. Examples of emotions are; grief, fear, anger, joy and serenity.

For example; when you are attracted to something or are feeling enthusiasm you move towards it. When you are feeling angry you attack (which moves the target away.) When you are scared you move away from the potential threat. When you have given up you go numb.

Most of our actions as human beings are driven by our known and unknown emotions. How we feel about people, places and events dictates how we behave.

From the time that we were small children, we where taught by people that we loved and trusted that there are "good" feelings and "bad" feelings. For example, we may have been told that anger was OK and joy is not OK. In other families they were told that joy is not OK and anger was OK.

To fully understand the role of emotions in our lives requires letting go of our childhood programming, as to what is an OK feeling and what is a not OK. Our judgments of good and bad have us suppressing what we consider to be bad and over-expressing what we consider to be good. Whenever we are over-expressing we are not being our authentic self and are acting. Acting takes a lot of energy/lifeforce to maintain.

Whenever we suppress a feeling, it stays locked within us and denies access to a part of our lifeforce. This is because emotions are a vital component of lifeforce. Whenever we block an emotion from flowing, or don't allow ourselves to feel it, we are blocking our lifeforce.

This does not mean that we should express all our emotions inappropriately, or in a way that abuses others. What it does mean is that we allow ourselves to experience the feeling by allowing it to flow. When our feelings flow, so does our life. When our feelings are blocked our lives are filled with struggle.

The mastery and understanding of our emotions is essential to the understanding and mastery of life.

The Optima Zones of Life
All of life can be measured on a scale from FULLY ALIVE at the top to NEARLY DEAD at the bottom (in fact DEATH is the bottom of the scale.) We call this scale that OPTIMA ZONES OF LIFE as it is divided into seven Zones, or categories.

Each Zone is represented by a color. The colors are: GOLD, BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW, ORANGE, RED and BROWN.

Most of us fluctuate somewhere from the top to the bottom, throughout the day, from day to day and year-to-year. On average we spend most of our time in one particular place or Zone of the scale.

Different areas of our life can be in different Zones. For example, your relationship could be in the Goldzone, and your career could be in the Yellowzone.

The scale explains a lot about human nature. You will see the entire cast of characters in your life and what you can expect from them.

Accompanying each Zone is a predominant emotion. Each emotion is a complete unvarying package of attitudes and behaviors.

The higher a person's position on the scale the better they survive. They are more capable of obtaining the necessities of living, are happier, more alive, more confident, and competent. They are winning at life.

The lower a person drops on the Scale the closer they are to death. They are losing, are less happy, less alive, less confident, less competent, and are losing at life.

A person in the GOLDZONE, BLUEZONE or GREENZONE doesn't settle down on this scale; they maintain a high interest and enthusiasm for living. Although they may become upset and drop down in a REDZONE environment, they are resilient and recover quickly once they are free of the lower Zone influence.

Conversely, a person in the YELLOWZONE, REDZONE or BROWNZONE can have a moment of winning or success, however it doesn't last long and quickly return to their original Zone.

What Traps Lifeforce?
Trapped lifeforce is lifeforce that is no longer available to you. This is like a car with less than all of its cylinders working. While it still works, the car is running on less than its full potential.

Lifeforce is trapped by one or more of the following:

  • ABUSE EPISODE
  • MULTIPLE ABUSE EPISODES
  • FAILED GOALS
  • PARADIGM CRASHES

An Abuse Episode leads to Multiple Abuse Episodes, which leads to Failed Goals, which leads to a major Paradigm Crash where your life, performance and relationships go into a steep decline.

A Paradigm is a set of ideas, rules, beliefs, values, theories, experiences, feelings and assumptions that make up your reality, how you perceive the world and how you create your outcomes.

Here is an example of the entire cycle in action:

Doctor Jones is a 42 year old Surgeon who is successful, recognized, popular, happily married, living in a up market neighborhood, with a dream house, car etc.

Life is good and the Doctor is in the Green Zone and working in a Green Zone department of the Hospital. After a successful few years, the Doctor is promoted to a new department that is managed by a Red Zone Superintendent. The Doctors charter is to improve the efficiency of the department.

As a result of working with a Red Zone Superintendent, the entire team is overworked and operating in the Orange Zone. Each person is working separately, afraid of losing their job, highly competitive and the department is full of drama.

The Doctor meets with the Superintendent with a positive suggestion to improve conditions. The Superintendent tells the Doctor to mind his own business, stick to being a doctor and leave administration alone.

This is an ABUSE EPISODE.

Concerned over patient conditions, the Doctor approaches the Superintendent again, and is repeatedly berated for his initiative. Secretly the Superintendent is feeling threatened by the Doctor and undermines him with the team.

Here we have MULTIPLE ABUSE EPISODES.

Feeling incapable of improving the department, and with declining relationships with the other team members, the Doctor feels like a failure.

Here we have a FAILED GOAL.

To relieve the stress, the Doctor begins to drink more alcohol. One night after a heavy drinking session, the Doctor gets up late with a hangover.

Arriving late for surgery and due to the lack of prep time a major mistake is made. The Patient sues the Doctor and the Hospital.

The Doctor loses his job and spends most of his money on his defense. Forced to sell his house, and under immense pressure the Doctor becomes abusive towards his family. The Doctor begins to drink heavily and eventually his wife leaves and takes the Children.

Here we have a FAILED GOAL, which leads to a major PARADIGM CRASH.

If Dr Jones does nothing to reclaim his trapped lifeforce, he may never reach the same level of success and happiness again. There are five primary ways to recover trapped lifeforce... click here for details.

What exactly is an Abuse Episode?

An Abuse Episode is defined as anything that happens to you, or any situation, occurrence, communication, action or event that YOU DID NOT WANT. In other words you are victimized. It also includes what you have done to others as a victimizer.

Abuse Episodes begin during prenatal times and continue through adulthood. The cycle of abuse is ended when we exercise our self-determination and become a fully realized, self-actualized human being.

Most people live at the effect of other people's actions and decisions. As a result, they are at "effect" and not fully at "cause" over their life. Any time you are at effect, you are a potential victim of abuse.

As a dependent child, we had no choice. However as an adult we have full choice over our environments and relationships. Full choice requires total responsibility for yourself.

Abuse Episodes include (but are not limited to:)

  • abandonment
  • accidents
  • broken love affairs
  • codependent relationships
  • controlling relationships
  • deception
  • disease
  • domination
  • emotional manipulation
  • failure
  • forced labor
  • forced values and beliefs
  • invalidation
  • lack of love
  • malnutrition
  • misrepresentation
  • neglect
  • out-integrity
  • poverty
  • ridicule
  • sexual violation
  • sleep depravation
  • substance dependence
  • suppressed communication
  • toxic environments
  • verbal criticism
  • violence

How Does the Lifeforce of Those Around Me, Affect Me?
Lifeforce flows in one of two directions; towards or away from. Thus we have positive and negative lifeforce.

If for example, you are in the Greenzone and your partner is in the Redzone, you will be pulled down the scale and they will come slightly up the scale. If you were to remain in the Greenzone, you would be expending a lot of your lifeforce to pull them up.

Either way, your partner is feeling more positive emotionally, and you are feeling lower emotionally as a result.In the business context, if you are the leader and you are in the Greenzone and you have a team who are predominantly in the Orangezone, you will be pulled into the Yellowzone and will be communicating in an angry, dominating way. This may not be your natural style, however it is unavoidable with a Orangezone team. The team will feel scared of you and will respond by becoming "yes" people, all the while complaining behind your back and feeling resentful.

As you can imagine, this is very draining of your lifeforce!

The solution is to hire only Greenzone and above team members. This will save you a lot of time, money and energy.

As you can see your choice of partners and team members is very important.

How Does Lifeforce Affect My Health?
There is a direct correlation between health, fitness and the Optima Zones of Life.

Most health problems stem from a chronic lack of available lifeforce. In traditional western medicine a lot of attention is placed on the symptom, paying attention only to the physical.

However, it is now widely accepted that healing has a metaphysical component which is as important as the physical causes.

Lifeforce is a vital ingredient in the healing process. This is why children often heal so quickly; they have more available lifeforce.

When you are in the Goldzone, you are immune to the most common viruses, colds flues etc. you very rarely get sick or have any health problems. if you do get sick you recover rapidly.

On the other hand, in the Brownzone people are prone to catching everything that is going around and often suffer from many psychosomatic illnesses.

How Do I Recover Lifeforce?
There are five primary methods of recovering lifeforce.

  1. Self love and nurturing
    The basis of all lifeforce recovery is to love and nurture yourself. This is the beginning, as it is the opposite of an Abuse Episode. Making positive changes that remove all abusive situations, people, places and environments is the basis of self love and the key to recover your lifeforce.

  2. Change of environment
    There are positive lifeforce environments and negative lifeforce environments. Your environment is either adding to or enhancing your lifeforce or it is taking away from or depleting it.

    Air quality, lighting, noise level, sanitation, colors, aromas etc. are all environmental factors. Living in the inner city, without green living plants and with a lot of noise pollution is very depleting of lifeforce. If you are living in the inner city, there are ways to infuse your environment with life giving properties.

  3. Positive Major life change (career, health, relationship)
    Making a self-determined change to improve the quality of your career, health or relationship can release a huge amount of trapped and previously unavailable lifeforce.

  4. Upgrading Knowledge
    Acquiring new knowledge and skills through education can free up your lifeforce by getting solutions to problems and putting order into confusion.

    By education we mean the process of self-discovery where you find your own solutions within yourself.

    Traditional education is based on the teacher being the authority, and the student is graded on right and wrong answers that are based primarily on memory. There is no practice or application to real life. This traps more and more lifeforce making the student duller and duller.

  5. Following a formal system
    A formal system is the fastest and most direct route to identify and recover areas where your lifeforce is trapped. It also gives you ongoing methods of enhancing your lifeforce.

    The process begins by identifying which Zones your major areas of life are in, and then moves you up the Zones area by area. Because it is a system, results are predictable and relatively consistent.

    After working with thousands of people from all walks of life we developed a comprehensive system called the Optima Program.

How Do I Protect My Lifeforce?
Your lifeforce is equivalent in value to your "GOLD." It is your most precious asset, your power source, your élan vital. We live in a world that is filled with abusive people, environments and situations. What we eat, how we live, what we watch, what we read, who we spend our time with, and what we listen to all have an impact on our lifeforce.

Everything is either adding to or depleting this vital energy. The key to protecting and enhancing your lifeforce is to be aware and vigilantly protect your most valuable asset.

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