The Changeover: The Ultimate Personal Transformation

By Dr. Lyle E. Hotchkiss

THE CHANGEOVER: The Ultimate Personal Transformation

OVERCOME THE NEGATIVES IN YOUR LIFE. Anxiety, frustration, stress, fear, boredom, and depression are devastating forces that consume your energy and overpower everything that is good. This life-changing book will help you surmount these negatives by initiating an improved reality, a true Changeover.
The Changeover is an eye-opening tutorial that will guide you into a significantly improved life experience, moment to moment. No matter what your current state of mind, The Changeover will raise your spirit via a personalized remodeling of your Primary Perspective, the determining factor for all of your interpretations. By applying The Changeover’s suggestions, your appreciations will grow, you will have greater success in life, and best of all, you will simply feel better.

“…a book of substance penned in the purest style of common sense, a style often missing
in the self-help genre. Read, learn, and grow from its pages. I highly recommend it.”
~ Dr. Robert D. Fritzen, Board Certified Clinical Psychologist

For the first time in your life, you are going to become truly self-determined. You will achieve a fresh start by first recognizing and then uprooting a lifetime’s incidental accumulation of diseased designs and conclusions, and afterwards replacing those unhealthy images with an extraordinary mindset that automatically savors the moment. The outcome is a wondrous Ultimate Perspective, a guardian of the soul that ensures an enduring, positive inclination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780990694014

Book preview

Moments

Introduction: Moments

A dear friend of mine, Sandy W., is the most positive person I have ever met. Her thinking is structured around the following adages:

If you want to be truly happy, look for the positives in each day.

And

To get the most out of life, you must live in the moment.

If you visit Sandy’s home you will not find these words framed and hung over a fireplace or taped to her refrigerator, because Sandy’s attitude is not dependant on motivational reminders. A positive attitude is the core of who she is.

Sandy has been tested time and time again by situations that have had the power to build layers of courage and stamina, but that also have held the potential to fatigue and to destroy. Whereas some people would collapse and stay down for the count, Sandy has been able to absorb punches and keep fighting. Sandy takes refuge in positives, and she refuses to let negative whirlpools suck her in. She has no time for depression because she keeps her calendar filled with possibilities.

How did she achieve this mindset? What makes Sandy so different from those who solve their problems by jumping off bridges? It certainly isn’t that her troubles have not been significant; they just haven’t had the negative impact that one would expect.

You might think she’s just one of the lucky ones, but luck has nothing to do with owning a positive nature. Constructive or destructive, a mindset is something that is developed over time. It is the result of one’s mental programming, not one’s fate.

Our happiness is determined by how we experience our time. Unfortunately, few enjoy their moments as they should. Far too many people race through life only to reach the finish line wondering, Where did it all go? When time passes by too quickly, even life’s best moments cannot be properly savored. Because time can only be spent, not saved, how we spend our moments determines what we get out of them. When our time is spent unfocused or we give too little significance to what is happening, those minutes are pretty much wasted. They certainly are not life enriching.

Instead of fully appreciating what each day has to offer, many rely on special experiences to achieve special happiness. Instead of realizing a plateau of good feelings, they experience peaks and valleys. It’s impossible to feel complete when a life is riddled with voids. If your happiness blooms primarily on weekends and holidays, you are spending most of your precious moments just passing time, waiting for better moments to arrive.

Significant moments are what make life significant. Ideally, you should find significance in every precious second, but this is not possible, of course. There is a limit to what a mind can assimilate, and a moment passes by all too quickly. What you can experience, however, is a significant increase in the number of those special moments. The more good times you discern, the less room you have for negative thoughts and voids.

Actually, there aren’t any insignificant moments, only unappreciated ones. Think about it. Everything that happens to you is significant, for those experiences are your time, your life.

A significant moment is not necessarily pleasant or momentous. In fact, difficulties make the biggest impact, since negatives breed the strongest emotions. Because they exert such an impression, unpleasant incidents can needle you long after they have dissipated. The mere memory of a negative occurrence can bring back the identical stress that the event originally generated.

It is understandable that people would try to discount the importance of difficult times. Misfortune is not compatible with happiness. But when negative moments are written off, what results is a conscious and subconscious masking of some very relevant happenings. Significant negatives that become artificially relabeled as insignificant can create considerable inner turmoil, especially when those disregarded negatives remain in play.

It is human nature to attempt the erasure of unpleasant memories, but this isn’t possible. The most that can be achieved is to selectively bypass or fast forward over undesirable thoughts and feelings. Skipping over thoughts you want to avoid does not mean they have been successfully eliminated. At best, they remain cancers in remission. But even if you could completely eliminate them, you shouldn’t, because your traumatic experiences are important facets of who you are.

A negative state of mind can also have a positive effect. A recent study revealed that negative moods are beneficial, because they make us less likely to make wrong decisions than when we are in positive moods, which are the times when we are most likely to act impulsively and make mistakes. This is probably true, but I would much rather be happy and make occasional errors than to be unhappy and make no mistakes at all.

To me, the more beneficial aspect of a negative state of mind is that those times, especially the crises, are preeminent opportunities for inner growth. But I am not referring to the traditional perceived benefit that those times are worthwhile because they build character, however. What I submit is that the stressful times are among the best times to discover new positives, positives that otherwise would remain hidden. A durable, positive outlook does not happen by eschewing the tough moments or by pretending you are not affected. It happens by embracing life’s inherent difficulties, exposing the positives within, and then turning those situations inside out by way of enlightenment.

Every now and then in this writing I will be relating bits and pieces of my own beliefs and experiences. It is recommended that nonfiction authors limit their use of the egotistical I and me in their script, especially in works that are not autobiographical, but this is not the usual self-help composition. The Changeover is entirely about intimate, personal thoughts, both yours and mine. It is written to be a communication, rather than a textbook. Through this face-to-face style I hope to connect with you, the person I imagine you to be: a person with the same needs as I and every other human soul.

I decided to write this book to share with you the valuable insight I received as a result of a personal tragedy that redefined my life. Prior to that event I perceived my life as being quite idyllic, with everything pretty much going my way. That security came to an abrupt end when I fell from my protective nest and landed upside down in a situation that stole every bit of my happiness. My perspective became dark, and I nearly self-destructed because relief seemed intolerably far away.

You know what? The tragedy that could have cost me the ultimate price ended up being my lifesaver. From it grew the revelation that my interpretations were inadequate to sustain me during the times when the road I traveled became rutted. In the process of deeply examining my belief system, I became aware of the frailty of my personal definitions. That insight motivated me to improve my interpretations and understanding of the world around me. Instead of fine-tuning my existing database, I decided to undergo a complete changeover. As a result of that mental restructuring, I found an incredible peace, and for the first time in my life I owned a durable, positive mental attitude that was able to resist being blown about by stormy winds.

My life once revolved around the setting and achievement of goals, all motivated by a hunger for special moments. I placed so much emphasis on goal visualization that a sizable part of my world was fiction. Now I understand that I had been dreaming more than living. Since achieving my changeover, I awaken each day realizing that this moment matters the most, and it is the present moment that deserves most of my energy.

It might sound as though I have become a realist who no longer dreams, but that is not the case. My dreams have not stopped. As a matter fact, I still identify with my long-time friend, one of the greatest dreamers of all, Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Like that enigmatic knight-errant, I see things a little differently, often not the way of the masses, and that’s how I like it. I have to admit I occasionally imagine windmill giants that must be battled, and I can’t resist chasing impossible dreams. Some may see folly in my actions, but I have chosen not to let contrary perspectives deter me from my quest.

Dreams have their merits, even though they are fictions. Dreams can provide relief from a sometimes harsh and unfair world by their ability to give hope for a better reality to come. A dream of honesty, truth, fairness, courage, good over evil, and success against all odds can inspire one to keep persevering. Dreams augment reality when they enhance the true moment. They become negatives only if they are substitutes for today’s positive harvest. No, my dreams and goals have not lessened; they just no longer are my primary focus.

My present goal is to help you rebuild the foundation of your thinking so that you too can have greater fulfillment. To accomplish this in a single presentation, I will be covering a lot of territory. But contrary to what you may expect, you will not be persuaded to adopt my perspective, and you will not be told what you should think. Instead, you will learn a process that, once personalized, will enable you to write your own story of success. The intent of The Changeover is to clarify your world and its indoctrinations so that you will then be able to understand why you think and feel the way you do. After your misconceptions have been brought to light, it will teach you how to intentionally reprogram your mind so that you will achieve a new, healthier perspective from which to enjoy living.

***

At this very moment in my composing, my eyes are teary. I am fortunate that I am able to communicate my thoughts via pen and paper, since a tightness in my throat makes speaking impossible. I just received word that my sister, Sandra Lee, has been given only two more weeks to live. It was only a year ago that her doctor found that she had inoperable cancer. For Sandra Lee, the trials of life will soon end.

My sister has had to endure an inordinate number of tough times throughout her life, but unlike Sandy W., my sister never seemed able to surmount those obstacles. Sandra Lee viewed day-to-day routine as an adversary and for her that made consistent happiness a truly impossible dream.

During her healthy years, Sandra Lee experienced many good moments, especially during holidays and family celebrations, but in order for a moment to meet her expectations, she had to make it a special event, always requiring a great deal of orchestration and self-sacrifice. By and large, satisfaction remained elusive to her. Fortunately, she has had the love of a close-knit family to sustain her through her frequent disappointments. At this point, when every moment is priceless, that love is the most special thing of all.

I had planned to present my sister with an early draft of this book, hoping it would inspire a sense of peace during the time she has left. Long before the completion of this work, however, Sandra will have passed away. Although this writing will not be finished in time for her eyes, she will be an inspiration to help me communicate ideas that I hope will foster the betterment of your life.

If you glean nothing more from The Changeover, I hope you will become attuned to the overwhelming importance of being unconditionally dedicated to the moment. Moments are all you have. Moments that pass by unappreciated are blank pages in your life story, but moments that are appreciated fill your story with script. Although you may not realize it, you are beginning your own composition. What will be written hereafter is up to you, and it will be done by your own hand. You can write an exciting page-turner, or two out of three pages can be empty. Bare pages obviously make for a boring story. What will you write?

PART I: ACHIEVEMENT

Instructions

The Changeover is designed to make you a happier person. By using it as your personal guide, you will realize greater contentment and a more peaceful life. No matter what your current state of mind, you will glean something positive from this book, but a significant transformation will only occur if you dedicate yourself to a thorough consideration of my thoughts, and a thorough reevaluation of your own.

This book is solely about you. You are the engine; The Changeover is just fuel. Read slowly, line by line and paragraph by paragraph. Take sufficient time to let images form and to contemplate them. If you don’t understand a point being made, reassess what you have read and reread sections when necessary. Highlight or bookmark those things you want to remember. Take notes. If you disagree with something, take a moment to consider why you have a contrary opinion or why I might think differently than you. Keep in mind that it’s not my words that count; it’s your deductions that matter. My job is to awaken your thoughts. Your job is to change.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Norman Vincent Peale

1

The Changeover

You have seen makeovers on television and in magazines. Now it is your turn for a transformation. But this one will be more than a cosmetic fix; this one will permanently alter your vision of life, especially how you view yourself. Instead of a temporary makeover, it will be a durable changeover. You will soon revamp your thinking to achieve contentment greater than you ever thought possible. You are beginning what just might prove to be your greatest personal accomplishment.

If you already feel contented, you will learn how to reach even greater heights of satisfaction through a growth in your appreciation, patience, tolerance, peace, and love. If you are experiencing a state of depression, you will learn how to rise above it by becoming the master of negative impulses. No matter what your state of mind, your life will soon become better.

I’m ready to improve myself, to improve my life.

None of us will ever be the best we can be. We are each a portrait-in-progress, forever an incomplete work hungering for more brush strokes. You know this, of course, or you would not be reading this book. Your interest in self-improvement shows that you are aware that your painting is not yet finished. Even if your purpose for reading these pages is merely to add scenery to the good feelings you already have, you know there is more you can do.

You would like to always look and feel your best, right? With sufficient discretionary funds, you can have better teeth, thicker hair, a smaller tummy, and even a new nose. Add such cosmetic enhancements to a healthy diet with regular exercise, and it’s possible to significantly improve your appearance. But what about your emotional state? What about feeling better? There is little benefit in looking your best if you are not also feeling your best.

When you feel inadequate, your inclination is to look at yourself, rather than into yourself, but feelings emanate from a soul, not a reflection. At most, changing your surface can only change the surface of how you feel. Although your mirror may reveal some imperfections that trouble you, perceived cosmetic deficiencies are never at the root of a darkened state of mind. Negative feelings are the result of far more complicated issues.

To significantly improve your attitude, attention must be focused on correcting your internal flaws. This requires making specific, structural changes. Motivational cheerleading can only temporarily quell a deep-rooted negativity. Lasting, positive change cannot come about by implementing techniques that are merely inspirational. Layering positive messages over an imperfect psychological foundation is no different than applying makeup to blemishes, or spraying paint over rusted steel. You may be able to temporarily feel better by using a positive determination to mask your problems, but wouldn’t you rather permanently improve your attitude? By applying the suggestions presented in The Changeover, you will soon do just that.

I’m told that I can be whatever I want to be, but I can’t envision being anything different.

You cannot become more positive and your life cannot be made better until you restructure your thinking. In order for your imagination to envision new possibilities, it must be freed from its enslavement. You must escape the limitations that you have been placing on yourself.

There is truth behind the sayings, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks and People never really change. There are good reasons for your present thoughts and for how you react to the various situations that confront you. Over time you have developed a powerful belief system that controls these responses. Your inner guide has become your inner dictator. Anything you attempt to do that goes against this belief system will eventually end in defeat. In order for your perceptions to be significantly better than what they are now, you must reconstruct that belief system. It must be converted into one that helps you, not one that holds you back.

I’d like to restructure my thinking, but how do I know what changes to make?

Your own personal needs will guide