The Speed Trap: How to Avoid the Frenzy of the Fast Lane

By Joseph Bailey

Between work, play, family, and friends, most of us feel like we're speeding along at 100 miles an hour. Our lives are full, yet we don't feel fulfilled. One solution is to slam on the brakes and adopt a radically simpler lifestyle. But, as psychologist Joe Bailey demonstrates in this essential guide, you don't have to give up everything to slow down your life. In over thirty-five captivating, instructive stories, Bailey shows just how easy it is to transform your way of thinking-and wave good-bye to aggravating bosses, rocky relationships, stress-induced illnesses, and other symptoms of life in the fast lane. You'll discover how to:

• Enjoy each moment and stop worrying about the past or the future

• Gain insight by trusting your instincts

• Increase your productivity and achieve success-without stress

• Disregard the negative emotions of people around you

• Attain a deep-rooted sense of fulfillment and inner contentment

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061872990

Joseph Bailey

Joseph Bailey, M.A., is a licensed psychologist and has been a psychotherapist for thirty-five years. He is the author of five books including The Serenity Principle and his most recent, Fearproof Your Life.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION:

PEACE OF MIND IN A FRENZIED WORLD—PIPE DREAM OR POSSIBILITY?

As we approach the year 2000, speed has become our god. We worship efficiency, getting the job done fast, accomplishing more and more, beating out the competition, getting to the bottom of our to-do list, and multi-tasking to get it all done. Advertisers sell more products now with speed than they used to with sex. Now it’s instant breakfast food, microwave waffles, instant cash and credit, and loans over the phone in the blink of an eye. We double the speed of our computers at least every two years, so we can get more done, keep up with the latest facts through the Internet, and send e-mail instantaneously to all our co-workers all over the globe NOW! We’ve got to keep our bodies moving faster, too. So we drink more espresso for a quick jolt, eat super vitamins to perk us up, and find the latest fad diet to have more energy. We might be getting more done than ever before, but are we enjoying our lives?

As a psychotherapist and seminar leader who has worked with thousands of people, the major complaints I hear from my patients are stress, anxiety, insomnia, relationship problems, and depression. All too often, my patients ask, What’s the point of all this rush to accomplish, acquire, and produce?; Why am I not happy?; I have everything I could ever want. I go on dream vacations, and I’m successful. My life is full, but I’m not fulfilled. I hear this litany of complaints every day in my office and on talk shows, yet we continue to plunge into the next century as though we are all in a race.

Is this really necessary? Is there another way?

The God of Speed

Twenty years ago, I lived my life on a treadmill. The faster I ran, the faster the speed of my treadmill. Each year of my life I tried harder and seemed to be busier, yet I felt as if there was always more to do. Speed had become my god. Inside I felt like a revved-up engine—anxious, stressed, worried whether or not my to-do list was done or would ever get done. I would feel satisfied and relieved for only an instant after accomplishing one more thing—a phone call returned, a day of clients seen, a talk given, one more load of laundry—but almost as instantly, my anxiety would begin to build up again. The result: I was living in fear and tension, and I suffered from insomnia and headaches. I was always in a hurry, I felt guilty about not getting enough done, and I basically felt dissatisfied with my life. I longed for weekends, vacations—or some elusive day when I could save up enough to retire and get out of the rat race. Sound familiar?

Then, about 1980, I got a call from an old graduate school friend who asked me to attend a seminar on a revolutionary new psychology called Health Realization,¹ which was based on the principles that governed mental health. I was already cynical of anything that professed to be a new paradigm and promised to have all the answers. I’d heard it all before many times and become disillusioned. But for some reason, I felt drawn to attend the seminar, almost compelled by my curiosity.

What I discovered that weekend has continued to unfold within me since that day. What I learned has allowed me to live my life without the stress and anxiety that had become normal to me over the course of my adult life. Despite what you might expect, I didn’t have to drop out of society, quit my job, move to the north woods, and become a reclusive hermit. Not only did I stay focused on my career, I went from burnout to total rejuvenation. I have been able to accomplish things in my life that I never even dreamed were possible. I have success without stress, I have the love of my life without working on a relationship, and I have an inner contentment in my everyday life that I thought was reserved for monks in a monastery, retirees, and young children—not responsible adults in a fast-paced working society.

An Inside-Out World

What I discovered in that seminar is that my personal world, the world of my psychological experience of life, is created from the inside out. What I know now is that every breathing moment I am creating my life psychologically through thinking. Moment to moment, I am thinking one thought after another—whether I know it or not—and each of those thoughts creates the moment-to-moment life I perceive, the emotions I feel, and the reactions I have to that perceived reality. This knowledge has given me a feeling of awesome responsibility and freedom, for I have discovered the gift of the free will.

I used to believe that life came to me from the outside in. I had been trained by all the influences of my life (school, parents, graduate psychology training) that my experience of life was a product of my upbringing, my past, and outside influences (society, the environment, the economy, politics, the media). And my experience confirmed this training. To me, it appeared that the weather, traffic, other people’s moods and behavior, my checkbook balance, the stock market, and all other external forces conspired to dictate my inner experience. After all, when it (reality) changed, my inner experience changed, too. And so it seemed to me that there was a stationary, concrete, external, and objective reality to which all of us react.

I did realize that my thinking had something to do with my experience, but only that it was some kind of middleman between reality and me. What I didn’t realize is that the actual personal reality that I saw out there was totally a product of my power to think. I believed that life out there was causing my stress; I was merely a victim of today’s hectic world. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

A New Reality

When I first heard this notion that it was my thoughts—and my thoughts alone—that created my reality, I felt defensive and angry. After all, I had spent years learning how my family and society were the cause of my thinking and experience, and I was teaching these ideas to my psychotherapy clients, seminar participants, and other professionals. The new ideas sounded like simplistic and even dangerous platitudes. But, paradoxically, at some intuitive level, the ideas made absolute sense and gave me a feeling of deep calm and serenity. Obviously, I was totally confused.

Over the past twenty years since I first heard these ideas, they have withstood the test of time not only within my life, but also in the lives of thousands of people whom I have met, people exposed to those very same ideas. I have seen that as people realize the principles that I will explain in a moment, their lives become calmer, more fulfilling, wiser, and more loving—successful in every sense of the word. By understanding that life is created from the inside out, we are empowered to create a beautiful life. If we are here on this planet but a short time—maybe sixty, seventy, eighty years—why not benefit from this gift?

Why Speed Trap?

I will use the term speed trap throughout the book to communicate how we are all caught up to one degree or another in a busy mind—a mind that is speeded up and out of the moment. Whether you think you are going too fast and your life is unmanageable, or not—at the root of all our psychological problems lies a busy mind, trapped by its own thinking. The speed trap is the common denominator of humanity’s problems.

How the Mind Works—Three Simple Principles

We are all part of the miracle we call life. As I look out the window and see the spring leaves budding again, the birds returning from their winter migration, and the daffodils in bloom, I witness the mystery of life at work—how life dies, transforms, and is reborn eternally. Whatever you choose to call this life-force that is behind all of nature, all the planets, stars, galaxies, and our own heartbeat, it is definitely at work all the time. Without that life-force, we could not experience all there is to experience, for we, too, are a part of that life-force. This life-force is called Mind.

The First Principle

Mind: The Energy of Life Itself—The Source of Thought and Consciousness.

Mind is the source of the invisible energy that we can’t see, smell, or touch; it is behind everything. Without Mind, we wouldn’t exist. It’s behind all that is part of our psychological life as well—every thought, perception, emotion, action, movement, and intention. Mind itself has no form, but it is the source of all forms that come into existence—a smile, an invention, a great idea, a thoughtful gesture, a jealous rage. Mind is the power behind what we experience. We can never know Mind in its totality, but we can sense its presence in everything.

Think of Mind like electricity. We can’t see it, yet we can see its effects in light, energy, movement of an engine, a bolt of lightning. Without the electricity, the engine wouldn’t have any power or movement, the light bulb wouldn’t shine. Mind is the source of all human experience—thoughts, perception, emotion, behavior, and awareness.

The Second Principle

Thought: The Continual Creation of Life through Mental Activity.

Thought is the principle that allows us to create the form of our moment-to-moment experience of life. Thought creates all mental activity—every mental image, fantasy, perception, sound, touch, pain, pleasure, emotion, sensation, concept, memory, dream, imagination, worry, all of what we think of as our experience. We are continually thinking, and each thought is continually giving us our moment-to-moment experience of life.

As I awake each morning, I might have a thought such as, Oh, no, another Monday morning! or I wonder if my car will start or I can’t wait to go outside and go for a run. The next instant I might think God, this bed feels so good, I just love lying in bed… or I’m so lazy, why is it so hard to wake up? or Oh well, just get up, Joe, it won’t kill you. With each passing thought, there is a change in the quality and intensity of my experience. Even my whole physiology changes with each thought, no matter how slightly. For example, when I have rushed and stressed thoughts, my brain sends electrical impulses to my stomach, shoulders, and jaw that lead to a feeling of physical tension, and thus I feel stressed.

Most of the thoughts that we think occur totally without our awareness. But whether or not we are aware of those thoughts, they will nonetheless become our experience. The thoughts we have instantly transform into what we call reality. Most thoughts are not even what we would usually think of as thoughts. For example, noticing my back is tight from sitting in this chair in front of my computer and readjusting my posture is actually a series of thoughts. I notice the discomfort, then it occurs to me to sit up straighter or stretch, all without an awareness of the thoughts that created that experience. Or having the passing thought that I am running late for an important meeting might cause me to feel fear, step on the gas, and terminate my perception of the beauty of nature around me. I will only notice how slowly the traffic is moving or how poorly someone is driving in front of me. On the other hand, the person in the next lane in the same traffic is seeing all the spring buds bursting from the trees and is feeling elated to be alive. This is all thinking. Through the gift of thought we are little reality generators.

Separate Realities

Because we are always thinking and our thinking is continually generating new experiences, we are always creating a new reality. Furthermore, no two people are ever creating exactly the same reality, for no two people think in exactly the same way. Just as snowflakes are all made of the same substance, but no two are alike, we all create reality with our thinking, but we are always thinking differently. Therefore, each of us lives in a unique personal reality. None of us can really know another person’s experience, because we can never have that person’s exact same thoughts. Even two stage actors playing the same role with the same lines will each experience it differently. And each actor will even experience subtle differences in playing the role on different nights.

The Free Will

Whether you realize it or not, thought is a choice. You can change your thoughts at will, and even if you don’t try to, thought is constantly changing nonetheless. Once you realize the principle of Thought at work in your life, you will see the power of the free will to change your experience of life.

For example, if I wake up and think, Oh, another Monday morning! and I realize I don’t like the experience of where that thought is taking me, I can change it. However, I also have to realize that the source of my experience is not the fact that it is Monday, but that I am thinking that thought. Simply realizing that I am the thinker of my thoughts allows my thoughts to change the instant I recognize that fact. With this knowledge in mind, I can then say to myself, This doesn’t feel very good. I could ruin a whole day that way! And in a instant, my mind will give me another thought.

To summarize, we create life with Thought, it is always at work, and it accounts for all of our experiences. No two people live in the same reality because we all have a unique thought in the moment. When you simply recognize the source of your experience—Thought—you are able to have a new thought. I’ll talk more about this in a minute.

The Third Principle

Consciousness: The Continual Sensory Experience of Thought as Reality.

Consciousness is the principle that brings every thought to life through the senses. Without Consciousness, you would not experience your thinking as reality. Thought would be like unread words on a page of a movie script—meaningless and unexperienced. Consciousness is like a full sensory special effects department that creates a movie with great sound and visual effects, plus smells, kinesthetic sensations, emotions, the whole gamut of sensory experience. Virtual reality machines look amateurish when compared to the power of Consciousness to make thought appear as reality. As an example of consciousness in action, consider a father who thinks, I am so lucky to be a parent. My child is so special. His heart warms, a smile appears on his face, his endorphin level rises, and he relaxes.

Consciousness is nondiscriminatory—it will bring any thought to life that passes through your mind. If I am walking down a dark path, begin to feel afraid of what might be lurking in the dark, and I see a stick on the ground, I might perceive the stick as a snake for an instant. While I am thinking that thought, I will have the sensory experience of a snake, and the experience will replicate my thought exactly (a rattlesnake will generate a stronger reaction than a harmless garden snake). If I imagine that my day is going to be hectic—in that instant I will experience a hectic feeling, even if I am still in bed. Perhaps I am in pain from a surgery, and someone whom I love dearly walks into the room. As long as I fill my head with thoughts of love, my experience of pain will disappear during those moments—until that person asks me how I’m feeling. Then, I may think about pain, and consciousness will make the pain reappear. If I am rushed and running out the door to work, consciousness will bring rushed feelings to my body. If I have the thought the next