This hub was spawned from another hub I wrote about Discipline. In this hub I want to talk about a few things that DRASTICALLY changed my life and can help anyone in theirs.

I will first discuss the most powerful lesson I ever learned that has brought me tremendous wisdom and reward-

Taking Personal Responsibility for EVERYTHING in my life from the Good to The bad, to the Ugly. Even things that don't seem to be your fault ultimately are. I'll explain why and how you can use this awareness to change your life substantially.

The guts of this hub is about how you can use HubPages to both write very useful advice/self help/awareness hubs while utilizing this as a way to give yourself advice.

The beauty of this concept is that it does something you don't even realize until later when it becomes a habit in ALL aspects of your life. It gets you used to asking yourself "why".

By writing a hub to answer a question that's bothering you i.e. why do I feel this way or that way? your actively asking the question, then in writing the hub pouring out advice and insights. One leads to another and by the time your finished writing the hub you know the answer or are extremely close to it, or you now know how to figure it out.

When you do this all the time your going to get into the habit of asking a question then before you even write the hub your mind will go to work to dig up all the insights because it will simply become practiced at doing this... You will find if you keep this up (thinking then resolving things) you won't even have to write a page to do it.

Body Language Vs. Thought Patterns

The thing I personally have noticed is that I have an amazing ability to see things that others seem to ignore, a lot like that show "Psych" or a toned down not so compulsive version of "The Monk's" ability (that television show) to see things others miss. I've simply learned how to read body language amongst other things that allow me to practically read minds through interpreting everything I see, hear, smell, and so forth.

Their is actually a corresponding network of body movements for every thought in your head. Getting to know someone is about learning what their body language is saying or thus decoding their thought to body movement code. Someone can say NOTHING and if their thinking loud enough (passionate translates into more defined body language they may not realize their doing) you can tell exactly what their thinking.

It's not psychic or telepathy, its "connecting" with their habitual patterns. Believe it or not we program ourselves all our lives, we pick things up and change but not that much.

Most of our body language was learned at a young age and the more you pay attention the more you can even learn to subconsciously decode someone's thoughts. What's also interesting to note is that if you record yourself you can even decode your own thought patterns and you can see where you went wrong- but that's another hub.

Think of it like this. If I put my hand up and flip you the bird (middle finger) you know exactly what words are in my head. Most people realize this and with sign language its more obvious to see what someone's "thinking" (but only if you know the code) but what's more obvious is if you learn someone's code you can literally read their thoughts as easily as you read the thought in my head when I flipped you the bird.. Get it? Awesome.. Moving on.

What this has to do with giving yourself advice is that the mechanism of writing and reading back what you wrote in another mindset (like when you need answers) is that your writing is based on thought patterns you had when you were writing/talking to a friend or advising them on something. When you find yourself in the mindset where your trying to solve your own issues the thinking pattern becomes contaminated by emotions, fears, negative internal dialogues etc.. In short the thinking pattern changes.

When you read back your own advice it can be more powerful to you than to anyone else because it is in your optimal (tailored for you) thinking pattern for resolution and when you read it your reading it in YOUR own language based on your successful wisdom mindset (for lack of a better term).

Looking in the mirror when confident:

Another metaphor is when you are confident, like when your on a date and she really likes you so you go look in the mirror you see yourself in a very confident and happy mood, even congratulating yourself for being so dam good looking *smiles* (oh like you never did that) what you see in the mirror is yourself in a good way.

Looking in the mirror when not confident:

Now on a bad date you go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror and see disappointment (if it goes bad but you like her i.e. you said something stupid) you see yourself in pain and shambles, not confident etc..

The two different events serve to reinforce your position. It actually helps when you feel disappointment to look in the mirror and fake confidence.. Do it long enough (mimicking the same exact movements and expressions etc.. which also requires thinking about yourself confident) can actually remind you that your not a total loser *smiles*

(I keep pictures of myself being confident around just in case I fall into a non confident slump I can see the difference and it actually helps me return to confident.. its about changing your thought patterns back)

HubPage writing helps you remember the patterns as well as the advice untainted by emotions etc.. The straight dope so to speak.

This is essentially how the hub writing works only your mirror is your words, your very way of talking/stringing your words together, you're thought patterns and internal dialogue come out even in your writing. In a way the words you type out are the body language of your current thought pattersn/minset when you're thinking rationally and in "advice mode".

Just like they can actually decode your writing using handwriting analysis, you can do the same with typed writing by decoding patterns. You are the best decoder of your own patterns however as they are very familiar to you, the only difference is you lose sight when emotions get in the way.

Someone can actually tell what mood you were in by your writing if they know you! The hub serves to reset you to the rational thinking pattern, then to allow you to see what you already know so you can help yourself as well as when your advice helps others.

In a way reading it cracks you out of the rut and the contrast will reset your thinking to the right "pattern" and you not only are able to heal from insight but you've eliminated the garbage from your thought stream that contaminated it.

Your mindset is the product of a gradual tapered set of events, which is why we don't realize it till its too late. With your writing you can almost instantly fire your mindset back into the right state because the writing, the words and insights that are very personal to you

(and that you don't have to be convinced are correct as is the case when trying to advise a friend) and they are the blueprint to the solution you seek, that your contaminated mindset won't let you see.

It's also you talking yourself back to reality which is why you write in detail nailing the entire set of advice, every angle etc... I can't tell you how many of my own hubs brought me back from depression, misunderstanding, confusion, and frustration!

Although it takes time to enter a contaminated mindset, it can be reset instantly through insight and reason. One reason we often can't get back to the right mindset is that we simply can't see the whole picture like we do when were rational. This is why often it takes a friend to crack us out of the bad pattern, because they can see what's up when you can't.

These contaminants come in over time, they don't generally just appear.. in time when a problem develops and you become worried over it your emotions cause you to lose sight and lose focus on the problem itself and you get stuck into a loop of deteriorating internal dialogues.

You ever wonder why they say you have to watch the "quiet ones" their the ones you have to worry about? It's because what generates irrational mindsets is thinking too much. When you don't express your feelings, when you don't write them down, or talk about them your mind starts to try to rationalize them and your mind turns on itself generating bad internal dialogue tapes!

This hub you write will be like breadcrumbs back to the original mindset without the other things getting in the way AND with the insight of how your thought streams differed so you can reset them. Over time you will start to habitually see when these contaminants START to infect you and can stop them instead of indulging in them.

It is best to write these things down before you are contaminated, and offer your wisdom in hubs to help others because you never know the life you help; it may just be your own!

You can still write hubs when your contaminated however as you may find this helps you reconnect to the advice. Personally writing helps me extract insights out of my brain and as I write I almost go into a trance (consciously) and my subconscious mind flows through my fingertips. Writing itself is healing for me, it's insightful, and I actually learn from my own writing because its coming from the subconscious mind by-passing the conscious filters.

Your advice applies to you too!

Your advice to someone else does apply to you too, and when you need it most it will be there for you since you wrote it down. When your mind is in the wrong mindset, emotion contaminated for example, even knowing some things you cannot access them correctly.

This way you can. A hub is a very structured set of answers based on how you learned them. They may be helpful to others as insight but to you they are very personal and very potent answers you very quickly will relate to, the trick is to see them and remember.

When you read them back you get the full network of the answers based on how you yourself know them so reading them when you need them bypasses this "block" that doesn't allow you to see the answers that are right there in your head! This is why a personal journal is so important (as I'll explain a bit below).

With all this "stored" data and experience = Wisdom, I can pretty much help anyone to either figure out where their going wrong or I can help point them to ways of discovering for themselves what their experiencing and so on and so forth. I don't know everything, far from it but I always seem to know enough to advise my friends.

I seem to gravitate to people, rather they gravitate to me too, that do what I've learned not to do thus maybe my reason for being there is to offer my insight and help. We're all angels in one way or another. Just because I know these things however doesn't mean that I will always see these insights when I myself need them! (although now that I hub them I do!)

The problem however is that your advice seems to be a one way street (until now)...

With all this knowledge I still cannot just on the fly fix my own problems and I'll explain why and why just about everyone does this. It's not that you are one of those "those who can't do, teach those who can't teach do" types.. It's based on the very basic human nature mechanism that makes it hard to detach yourself from your knowledgebase when in crisis.

The most powerful tool in your life should be a personal journal but if your like me writing a journal takes a certain amount of ambition to do it that you may not have.

I don't know why but I just never do it even if I want to, but I have discovered a way to keep a digital journal, complete with pictures and cool multimedia experiences, that excites me-

Writing HubPage Articles.

In this way I get to do something I enjoy- Teach- while doing something I need to do anyway- Log my life's lessons, experiences, and fundamental turning points, new awareness, wisdom and acquired knowledge.

Writing a hub page has allowed me to do all of these things in one place in a way that I enjoy and can publish my thoughts so others can enjoy them too.

_{Although I can't exactly write down my most intimate thoughts this way, I really don't have much to hide anyway.}

I'm not that private a person, but the thing is, I get to write down everything else (less deeply personal thoughts that others don't care to hear anyway) but those things I don't write often have an emotional stain on my brain anyway so I don't need to write it down- the things you forget like insights, advice and things that help you in crisis - should be written down.

The thing about a journal is you actually should use it to help you if you lose your path. We all learn important things but when love or any other powerful emotion comes in and upsets our peace of mind or rationality we can find ourselves at a loss for answers, competence to resolve the simplest problems and frustration to even maintain a calm, relaxed disposition.

This causes us to not be able to function adequately to dig our way out of the mess. With what I'm going to show you here, and what I do myself, you will be able to research YOUR OWN ADVICE AND EXPERIENCES, INSIGHTS, AND SO FORTH to retrace your steps and pull yourself out of hell without having to wear your heart on your sleeve.

This is powerfully uplifting, helpful, and empowering in our weaker moments. Now the things you tell your friends, the advice you offer someone in need can bail you out when you need it. Stored here on HubPages for other people to access from your stored thoughts when they need help... In this capacity your advice becomes more powerful because people you may never know you helped will read it and it may change their lives (Let's hope it does)!

And let me add one more thing... You can even write HubPages that you never intend to publish. That's right you can generate HubPages specifically for your own use and simply not publish them if you don't want.

This gives you the flexibility of using the brilliant and fun format of HubPages without having to publicize your "Journal (guys) or Diary (girls)" entries! Any time you want you can just go in and hit preview to see it in all it's glory and yet it is still private and not even indexed in Google.

I do this with a few things like my research that I don't want to make public at least not yet, as it allows me to toggle privacy or public views.

I tend to write a hub any time I give someone powerful advice as often in helping them I am myself enlightened as well and want to document this advice, not necessarily their story or "gossip" but I just write about the pure lessons, advice, insights and so on because I know some day I may need this insight myself when I'm lost.

An example is if I get into a relationship and find myself irrationally jealous and insecure. Right now, while I'm not in a relationship and haven't been for some time now, and don't need to be, I'm clear minded and rational about these things as I help my friends who are, based on what I've learned in my past.

I write them down now and one day I come back and realize I wrote a great (and I did) hub on "decoding Jealousy" and viola insight like a mo***...*smiles*

We all tend to be able to give others advice and see lucidly the problems but when it comes to our own life its very difficult to have the same vivid perspective and to resolve our own issues because were tainted by our own emotions and rationalizations, something we don't generally let those were advising get away with (cop out), but when we are dealing with ourselves we do.

You can resolve this problem and actually use writing hubs as a powerful self awareness, self advising, and educational tool that will allow you to bypass the "block" that makes it impossible to walk the walk like you can talk the talk.

We often have all the answers with us, especially if were well versed, but extracting that information is the key to actually being able to use it for ourselves. This is where the magic of writing a Hub comes in.

You can write it down in a hub and read it later. You will be amazed at how profitable this is for solving problems and issues in your life rather quickly and powerfully.

All of a sudden your able to take your own advice, practice what you preach, stop being your own hypocrite, and so on. This is the freedom and power I discovered and why I continue to write new hubs all the time even though I'm keenly aware theirs very little (pennies actually) money in it.

Their is however a tremendous personal empowerment and satisfaction in it which is the real currency for me (and hopefully for you too when you apply these principals).

(in a good way as in dangerous to the existence of unresolved personal problems hehe) and maybe some day when my resources and income match my ambitions and ideas I'll built programs that change the world and help people. But for now I can just dream and document my ideas.

I have been contemplating for about 10 years how to build an artificial intelligence database that would network all my writings, all my insights into a sort of Google Psychologist of a sort.

In this concept If I ran into a problem in my life and I knew I'd been here before and got through it (and wrote about it) I could go in and ask the program a question (search phrase) like "Why do I feel insecure about my girlfriend being faithful to me?"

The data base would then kick out my Jealousy hub and consolidate the parts of the hub that relate directly to why this is more about my own issues with thinking or fantasizing about other women at work...

_{(not cheating but as you'll learn in my hub there, fantasizing to any extent about other women while in a relationship can actually impact you psychologically!)}

...and it would serve me the best advice and insight that my own brain could provide and yet can't access directly due to my emotional paralysis.

Side Bar:

Now this question if a friend asked me would be very easily explained, and like in my own awareness of my own problem I would of course take the basic wisdom of what it might be, and mix it with the variables, but in the end its coming up with the main gist of insight that may be the culprit. In asking the database for an answer I would read this answer and it would unlock the part of my awareness that can think outside the box I'm in emotionally and I could decode the rest on my own!

A similar program does something like this for the internet but the same technology built into a personal data base or even JUST HubPages articles or my blogs etc.. Would actually do the trick based on artificial intelligence algorithms... for now my hubs will have to do, but its a fascinating concept/idea!

(I've been writing these things down far before I discovered HubPages but HubPages allows me to format it and add pictures etc.. to really drive the point home easily even for myself!)

When it comes to giving advice I can write an amazing hub both lucid and concise, yet hitting all the angles.

I can sit and have coffee with my roommate for a heart to heart talk about her relationships and lucidly see everything she seems to be missing such as the man she's daring's body language, the way he talks, moves when he's around her and of course all the juicy details she tells me about what he said and what she's said.

I can point out other people's mistakes (usually I just keep these insights to myself as people don't like to know them) what they do to upset others, what they do to contaminate themselves (i.e. negative thinking/talking about themselves etc..) and I can see amazing insight into other people, yet when it comes to myself why do I never see it coming? Again because I'm personally involved. One thing I learned to do is tolerate others criticism.

I beg people I know to tell me when I'm doing anything wrong, irritating, ridiculous, compulsive etc.. Because I rely on this to see it. I've even gone so far as to video tape myself interacting with people to see what I'm doing wrong (and in hind sight watching the video I see it! This is kind of what gave me the idea to use HubPages, and my own writings to help me figure things out. Usually when a certain type of information appeals to you that's the problem!

Just like your body craves the food that contains what your body needs at any given time your mind craves information that you know deep down will help. You do know when your doing things wrong, you just don't see it consciously! You see them mostly in your dreams!

One way to discover your faults is to go into a book store in a self help section and see what stands out to you, what interests you.. It truly helps! Then you go home and write on that topic and you will be amazed at what you discover!

I have been through a lot in my life and the first half of my life for me was very painful emotionally. I dug my way out of the six foot deep coffin I was buried in emotionally growing up and through a range of experiences I learned a whole hell of a lot about my self and people. One thing I cherish now that I absolutely didn't have before is that I take personal responsibility for my life.

I now spend more time trying to figure out how to see why things happen than like before, trying to make excuses for why it's not my fault. A tremendous insight is opened up to those who accept full responsibility for things happening to them no matter how they "appear", you stop asking "why me" and start asking "how did I create this environment where this event was possible".

Throughout the last 15 years since my high school graduation I had peaked my interest in the human condition, human psychology (and even animal psychology), body language, and just about everything else I could get my hands on.

Every time I came across something I didn't understand I Googled it, ah what an amazing gift Google is to this next and current generation, I don't know where I'd be today without it.

My sublime curiosity to learn about my world was spiked when all the things I became curious about or was desperate to understand like girls and psychology, turned out to heal my wounds and made me feel like superman where by I could leap tall emotions in a single bound and because I'd learned not just that I was hurt by certain things but why I was hurt.

The most profound thing I came to realize was that no matter what, no matter how, no matter when, no matter whom... Nothing happened to me without me taking some action, making some choice, somewhere in my past that lead to either my falling into this pit of sad emotion, this long string of clumsiness, or bad luck, or even being surrounded by people whom hate me.

When I started to take personal responsibility for my actions I stopped asking "Why me" "what have I done to deserve this sh**" "I'm a good person why do these things keep happening to me?" and my personal favorite "Lord why hath though forsaken me?" and I started asking the healing question, the empowering question, the magic questions...

"What did 'I' do to make this happen?"

(I repeated that because it is a very important key to self awareness, thus better writing of hubs for this purpose)

I gotta tell you it was a very complicated thing to wrap my head around. Things like "wait are you trying to tell me that that idiot who was driving drunk and slammed into me at a red light when I was doing everything right, was my fault?"

Dam Skippy it was. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying I was to blame for that happening to me, (hypothetically) but I was absolutely responsible for being where I was that allowed him to hit me. Had I chosen to go to one more store, hit my breaks sooner, anything would have chanced what happened.

You have to change your very way of thinking to a more enlightened and illuminated way of thinking. You have to break out of the blame box, as blame does not change anything. Worrying about who's fault it is, is like externalizing the responsibility and the problem with that is you cannot change anyone but yourself, thus if its not your fault your powerless to actually do something productive about it.

We cannot change anyone else, but we very much can change ourselves.

Once you start thinking in this direction of "what did I do" then everything in your life becomes a matter of how the situation came to be, not whose fault it was. You start to learn to trace backward to the very moment that you made a choice coming out of Starbucks coffee, that lead to your making another choice to turn left as you decided you needed to get some Chinese food on the way home, to making the "choice" to stop at the light.

You have to think also that the law, right/wrong, moral/immoral, these things don't count as they are superficial when it comes to taking responsibility and figuring this out. The fact is that had you ran the red light you wouldn't have been hit at that moment the drunk driver hit you, sure you may have hit someone else but that would have been your choice.

We have free will and although we follow certain laws, and principals, moral codes and so forth it all breaks down to choice. Sometimes believe it or not an immoral choice can save you from what would have been a catastrophe.

You speed to work, breaking the law and putting people in danger weaving in and out of traffic so fast (immoral choice), but chances are driving perfectly to work, driving lawfully at the speed limit, and stopping at that traffic light may have been the choices you made that allowed you to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and BAM you get hit from behind and your life is never the same.

Don't misunderstand me here. I'm not in any way suggesting that you act immorally or break the law. My point is that choice is what changes EVERYTHING and you can actually trace back everything that happens to you weather you like it or not, weather you want to accept that reality or not, to being YOUR FAULT.

Again its a lot to wrap your head around, as we live in a world where just about everyone is against taking responsibility for anything they don't desire but this is the key to all the wealth of life, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow's magical path starts at personal responsibility.

The other thing to think about here and why this was brought up in this hub is.. The difference between clarity and confusion is also a choice. When you write down your insights when you're clear minded, then reading it when you're "fuzzy" minded will give you the power to choose the right pattern of thinking, it will give you the ability to see what your fuzzy mind doesn't and that changes your choices made.

Many of our mistakes in life come from bad choices, many of those choices are motivated by bad thinking or lack of awareness, even of things we already know! Emotions can overpower our thoughts and blind us to our simple truths. The "I knew better" applies here. Writing your insights just may save you some day from being trapped in a bad mindset.

I've found old letters I wrote before the computer era when I wrote down insights about confidence and just finding this paper and reading it (in a time I was less than confident) changed my entire mindset and thus my choices, and my life. This is the power of writing hubs like this. I hope you see what I see here.. Life is extraordinary but we must have access to our own insights in time of crisis. Now with HubPages or a journal you do!