Theatre of the Mind Podcast Episodes

Kelly Howell: All right, here we go. It's February 17th, and in a minute, we are going to speak with Bill O'Hanlon about finding your path and purpose in life. Bill is a psychotherapist, author and teacher, and he's got a great audio program called "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot," which offers advice on how to recognize the four signals that are always there for us to create a life that we're passionate about, and that fulfills us.


OK, I've got Bill O'Hanlon here in my studio in Santa Fe. Thanks, Bill, for taking time out of your busy schedule to come here.


Bill O'Hanlon: Thank you! Thank you for having me.
Kelly: So, when I went on your website and saw all the stuff that you're doing, all the books you've written, all the workshops you've got going on, I really felt like a slacker. [laughs]
Bill: Is that right? I feel like a slacker! I'm so lazy and I just have a passion, you know?
Kelly: How can you be lazy? How many books have you written?
Bill: I just finished my twentyfourth book. I'm starting my twentyfifth.
Kelly: And that's lazy? [laughs]
Bill: Well, I get sparky I get so excited about something, and I will. And I have learned over the years how to finish things. I always procrastinated, ten projects at once, and didn't focus. I've learned better how to focus, so that's good.
Kelly: That's amazing.
Bill: Come on. I went on your website, and looked at all the stuff you've done, this big company you've created. You can't be calling yourself a slacker!
Kelly: [laughs] I felt a little like a slacker, I have to say.
Bill: Aw, come on. When I met you years ago you already had this company, so you were already going.
Kelly: Yes.
Bill: Now, you started in the Pacific Northwest?
Kelly: I actually started in New York City.
Bill: Oh, OK.
Kelly: In Manhattan, in the mid80s.
Bill: Wow!
Kelly: Your subject here, with the audio program that you did, "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" I listened to it, and I went back in my mind to how I got on my path, and it all fit what you had to say, which was really special.
Bill: How did it fit? I'm curious.
Kelly: Well, the four signals the blessing. I had a woman that I went to. I had been in a car accident, I had lost my mother to cancer, I lost my job, I was in a neck brace. I went to a spiritual teacher who was a psychic. And she took one look at me and she said, "Oh! Your subconscious is a mess." And I'm like "...Yes! Look at my life!" [laughs]
Bill: [laughs]
Kelly: I was afraid to go out of my apartment. And I remember hearing in your audio about how you were kind of suicidal. Well, I was in that stage. And she told me to make an audiotape. And she gave me a book. She said, "You don't even need to read the book, just read the meditations in the back of the book and go to sleep. Take it like a pill listen to it every night." And so I did. And within about six weeks, all these synchronicities started happening.
Bill: Uhhuh.
Kelly: And it never occurred to me that I would spend pretty much my whole life making audio programs.
Bill: [laughs]
Kelly: But, long story short, that was the first program I made.
Bill: Wow!
Kelly: So, that was the big blessing that led me to do what I do.
Bill: That speaks to a couple of them, really the wounding, I talked about the four. So, we can let people in on it, I have my little sound bite: "Blissed, blessed, pissed, or dissed." I've got it down to this sound byte now. Those are the four energies that get released from our souls, from our hearts, from our deep insides. And I think sometimes it's easy for people to go on the positive side "Oh, I love this! I'm blissed about it. Follow your bliss."
Kelly: Follow your bliss.
Bill: It's what Joseph Campbell said when we lived in Santa Fe. So you have these little bumper stickers: "You're following my bliss." That's a good one. It's great if you can find something you're excited about. I had a stepson, fourteen years old, who knew he wanted to be a musician. He succeeded, he's the lead singer of 311 those of you younger people know that group.


He just followed that. He knew what he wanted to do. A lot of people don't know what they want to do. They know what they don't want to do sometimes, they know, "I don't want to do this, I hate this kind of job, I hate this kind of life." And so I also wanted to represent the negative side. And that's the pissed and the dissed.


What I mean by pissed, I sort of made a catchall category Where have you been wounded? Where have you been hurt? And the dissed part is where you've been disrespected and where you're dissatisfied.


So, it's bringing back that negative energy and turning into positive energy by turning it into contribution. So you can take your agoraphobic, can't go out of the house, your accident, your mother's death any of those terrible things that happened that you wouldn't want to wish on anybody really bad things. Major Giuliani said, "I had prostate cancer. Wouldn't want to wish it on anybody, best thing that ever happened to me in my life.


And you hear that sometimes from people. You can't say it from the outside. You can't say, "Oh, you should get cancer!" or "Once you get cancer, that's something that will be really good for you!" You can't be glib about it.
Kelly: And when it's going on you feel like you're being punished.
Bill: Absolutely. "What did I do?" or "I'll never get out of it, " or "This is terrible and it's diminishing me." But there's a way. The way you took, because you were blessed by this person who sort of steered you in a certain direction of the universe that was saying "Hey! Do this, Kelly! Go here."
Kelly: Well, she was right. I was really messed up, and I needed these audiotapes for myself.
Bill: Exactly. And here's the thing, I think, that makes the big difference with this negative stuff turning into positive stuff. You could have just withdrawn from the world, withdrawn from lives, shrunk.


But because these tapes helped you so much, you decided, out of that, to go help other people. It wasn't just like, "I read about this study that said these tapes are cool!" You felt in your deep heart and soul, "Everyone should know about this! Everyone should have these, and I have to go do this." So that's the soul signal.
Kelly: And also the wounding. So that's the other signal that you talk about, is the wounding, because when I had all those negative circumstances, when my life just got totally derailed, I think it was the first time that I'd ever known true suffering. And so it was through really feeling the true suffering that I had compassion for other people.
Bill: Yes.
Kelly: I knew, "Oh my God! There are people out there suffering worse than I am."
Bill: I think that's right again. But you have to have a warning, because some people don't go to compassion. They go to more toughness. They go to more shieldedness. They go to more disconnection from people.


So, I say that the thing that makes a difference in these negative things turning positive is, one, can you make a contribution out of it? The second thing is, can you become more selfcompassionate and compassionate to other people?


The third thing, can you make a connection a connection to yourself, connection with others, and a connection with something way beyond people the universe, God, higher power, bigger meaning, whatever it may be, nature anything that helps you make that bigger connection.


And if you can't do that, you're probably going to suffer from that classic posttraumatic stress. You're going to shrink from the trauma and the wounding, rather than grow.


So, I think that's a crucial thing. You were able to take that wounding, which was devastating again, you would say, "I never want anyone else to ever experience that." But since you're already in it, there's no way out of it. The only way out is through. And then, can you turn it into something that actually contributes to your life and other people's lives? Can you soften towards yourself and other people?


I knew, just peripherally, the therapist Bruno Bettelheim, who became well known. He was a Holocaust survivor and a therapist. I once saw him present and he was so angry, and critical, and mean to the people in the workshop. I wasgosh, I've read his stuff and really liked itI was scared of the guy.


It turned outafter he died people came out of the woodwork because he was such a powerful figure he had intimidated themhe'd been beating the children he'd been treating at his school, and he'd been beating some of his staff members. He'd get outraged and he would just hit them and he would just keep hitting them. Nobody told on him because he was such a powerful figure in the Chicago analytic area.


I thought, "Well there's a guy who went through trauma and he didn't become more compassionate, he became more disconnected." We know that's a typical thing that happens when you're traumatized or wounded, you can dissociate and disconnect. He clearly had love and empathy there, because he had started this therapeutic school for kids that were troubled. But then he had this other side he had never really dealt with or integrated, that came out as harshness and lack of compassion. So you were able to turn that wounding into compassion for yourself and for other people who are suffering.


We haven't talked too much about this, but when you start your company the odds are against you. Most companies fail. Most ventures fail. You don't know how to do it; you've never done this before. It takes a lot of energy to get through all the barriers, to figure out how to make this thing work. You have to have big energy to have something succeed.
Kelly: But also, don't you think if you have a big vision...?
Bill: Well, that's exactly right.
Kelly: I had a vision. So, if you have a vision, life takes care of itself, it just reorganizes. That's when a lot of the blessings come.
Bill: Right. These energies give you big visions. Also, how much you let yourself go big. Obviously some people stay really small. They stay frightened or they say: "Well, I can succeed at this level; but I'm not going to that level, it's too scary for me, " or, "I don't deserve it, " or all those things. Which they have to listen to your tapes to get over, I see.


To get over those limiting beliefs and fears, because sometimes we limit ourselves from going as far as that vision that's deep in our hearts and our souls could take us. Or we don't let ourselves have the support, or attract the people who are going to help us do it or find the pathways through. We've all had to deal with our limitations in one way or another. But I agree, that's what happened to me.


You said, "How did you write so many books?" It was, for me, that I had such passion, and such a desire to make a contribution, and such vision; that my petty personality couldn't even hold me back from it. I was disorganized, I was shy, I was fearful, and it's like the universe just slapped me in the face and said: "Get over that stuff, you've got something to do. You've got something to do that is bigger than your smallness that you're in now." And I just felt like a snake shedding its skin, or a chicken molting. That skin was way too small for the dream or the vision.
Kelly: So, how does that fit in to your audio, which signal is that? Is that part of the...
Bill: The signals are just the energies, then out of that you have to figure out: "Well, OK, where is this taking me?" It's more like a compass; these things are like compasses. "Let your soul be your pilot," was what I called it, after the Sting song, because I thought that was such a great phrase. These are only the signals, then you have to take it another level, another direction, to make it real in the world. I just wanted to make this audiotape and say...


I've been a therapist for 30 years, and people come to me. I would sayit's hard to make an exact estimatebut I would say like threequarters of the people who come to me don't know what they are on the planet for. They just don't seem to know.
Kelly: I get this question all the time: "How do I find my path and purpose?"
Bill: Absolutely. Yes. It's always been surprising to me, because I've sort of had an inroad to my heart and my soul since I sort of woke up in my early years, in my early 20s. It seems like I always know where I'm going because I have this innerit's like the kids gamewarmer, warmer; colder, colder...
Kelly: Your inner navigation system.
Bill: Yes. It's an inner navigation system if you pay attention to it. So I wanted to make this audio to tell people that everybody has an inner navigation system. Somehow we're not listening or feeling it. There are these four signals...
Kelly: We believe in it, we even believe it exists.
Bill: I think that's a different thing. Sometimes people don't listen to it and they don't get in touch with it, or they deliberately ignore or suppress it because it's too...What it's going to call you to is probably something big. Some big vision, some big dream, some big action...
Kelly: That is going to push your edges.
Bill: That is going to be a little scary to people. They want security more, or they want to be loved, or whatever it is that holds them back. So they don't even listen to it at first. If they listen to it, then it takes some courage to actually act on. It is a bit like that leap of faith, of stepping off into the unknown. Like: "Wait a minute, this is crazy."
Kelly: Totally.
Bill: Again, we both live in Santa Fe, and I'm telling youI used to live in Omaha, Nebraska. I never heard this story when I lived in Omaha, Nebraskabut I've heard this story from 30 or 40 people since I've lived here: "I came here for a visit and I knew I had to move here. I just left everything. I called my family and said to send my stuff, or I called my friends and said to send my stuff, or I quit my job, or I bought a house while I was here on vacation. I had to be here."
Kelly: I did the same thing.
Bill: That kind of call; that's what we're talking about. I've heard that story so many times here and I never heard it about Omaha, Nebraska.
Kelly: [laughs]
Bill: This place sort of calls people. But I think it's the same thingyour dream calls you. Some people come to visit and they say, "Whoa, I'd really love to live in Santa Fe, " and then they go back to Omaha and they stay there because: "Oh, I couldn't. The houses are too expensive. What would I do for a living?" Other people just say: "Pfft. I'll figure out what I'll do for a living. I've got to be there."
Kelly: So, you think part of it is the risk factor. That maybe people that find their path and follow it are willing to take more of a risk?
Bill: I think so. To step out into the unknown. For meI make a distinction between belief and faith. Belief is: "This is true and I know it's true." Faith is: "I have no idea, I just have a sense this is the right way to go." It's much more of that stepping out into the unknownwhich you did when you moved to Santa Fe, which you did when you started your audio company. That's absolutely a step of faith. You have a sense: "I think it could work out. I have a sense this is what I'm supposed to do. I have a sense that it will work out. But, I actually may be wrong, and I may go down..."
Kelly: Yes. You have to be willing to make mistakes.
Bill: And fail at it, and not know what you are doing, and go off the path. At times in my path, I've gone off; I've been seduced by money or clever ideas. Then, after I go a little on that path I think: "Oh, that doesn't feel right." There's all this stuff about goal setting and having specific goalsI'm not very good about that, I've always done it by Braille.


I don't see, I have a vague sense of the future but then I feel my way, through my heart and through my soul. I think: "This feels right, no..." Sometimes I can't tell until I actually go on the path and I say: "You know, this wasn't right. This was wrong for me. I'm going in the wrong direction."


I don't know exactly how, but over time it starts to come clear to me. When I'm done with a certain direction I say: OK. I did that. I accomplished that. I got to where I wanted to go. I made the contribution I wanted to make, and something new is starting to burrow itself through me. I can feel sort of tectonic plates shifting in my soul, and the bliss changes and the blessed changes. Then the right person shows up and says, "Oh, you ought to do this, " or, "What about this?"
Kelly: So, you get a reflection back in life.
Bill: Once you start to trust that, once you actually listen to your souland the blissed, and the blessed, and the pissed, and the dissedand you've trusted it once in a major way, or in a big way. You get better at it than other people.
Kelly: Yes and you can't go back once you've trusted it once, you can't go back.
Bill: Like sometimes I say, I can never have a job. Because I could never have a job. Yes, I couldn't have a job anymore because I'm spoiled for jobs, because, unless they said within this job, you know, we'll let you do whatever it is you think has heart and soul for you, and whatever you think will succeed. OK, well that's...
Kelly: We'll pay you lots of money...
Bill: That's an OK job and you don't have to come to work at any certain hours, OK that's my kind of job. But there are very few of those jobs, but because I know that my life really depends on having to follow that stuff, and if I don't, I start to wither a bit inside.


My energy starts to diminish, and I think that's the key. If your energy starts to diminish, and for a long time it waxes and wains day by day, and if you feel this trend of "I just am not that excited about doing this or getting out of bed" then you know something is being birthed in you, or some new phase is coming, some new calling is coming to get you. And I sort of wait for that, because there are sort of dormant periods for me.


And then, when I come out of that, after that sort of winter and the spring bursts forth again, and I have all these new excitements and energies and something new has happened, that usually builds on the old stuff, but is different.


Has that happened for you and..
Kelly: That totally happens for me. In fact, every morning now, because I got so busy last year, it was kind of like I got shot out of a cannon. I'd been in bed last winter with a back injury, couldn't do anything. So, I thought, OK this is a perfect opportunity for me to revision my life.


So, I spent many hours in bed, just dreaming how do I want my life to be. Not that I was unhappy with my life, but what new, there's always something you can tweak, and perfect in your life, and I think it's important to recognize that you have to look at your life and say "OK, what's not working, really really well?" I mean, we get so some complacent.


So, what could better, what would make me happier. I did that, and then I got shot out of a cannon, I took on way too many projects. So, by the end of the year I was really working on the weekends, and I went, I finished everything I said I was going to do, because I'm one of those people.


And finished a month late, but did it, and then now I'm looking at my life going, OK, I'm going to be very careful about what I choose to do.
Bill: What you say yes to.
Kelly: Because my lifestyle in the balance, and the things that I need to do, to be able to create, is really important to me, I need time, I need space.
Bill: Well, and so, to assert instead those fallow periods where I think, oh you know my back, really, you know I wouldn't have chosen this path to kind of get a renewal for my life, but I think you've learned to trust that process so much so.


Well, usually I am so busy I don't have time to step back and get the birds eye view, I'm right in the worms eye view trying to get everything done, and I get too busy.


And then, you do, it's like I heard that...
Kelly: So, now it's like letting ideas percolate.
Bill: That's nice.
Kelly: So, I sit and I have my cup of tea and I have so many ideas, so many projects I want to do, and I know I can't do them.
Bill: I'm cursed with that as well.
Kelly: It's a problem, you talk about psychotic and enthusiasm, yes, I've got that problem too. And so, I just make lists, and then I just let it stew. You know, and see what really calls me.
Bill: That's nice.
Kelly: What really pulls me.
Bill: And again, see, that's a process that I think, if some people haven't done it, they just don't know what that's about, because having trusted my soul to let me know, here's the right direction, here's the...


Sometimes you just got to do all that you can do, make your lists, think about it really consciously, and then just let it go and say "OK, now I'll fell my way towards which is the right way, or am I too busy? Have I taken on too... it's a great project, I probably should do it, it's just not the right time because I've been taking on way too much and I'm not going to be effective."


And also, I'm not going to enjoy my process as much, when I take on so much. And sometimes there's a period where you take on a whole lot, and then that's great, but if you're doing that for 20 years or so, if you're not that kind of person, you'll burn out.


And so, that's not a good thing either, and again we're sitting here talking about a kind of a wonderful problem to have. Too many ideas.


[laughter]
Bill: Too much to do, some people are still trying to figure out what they're going to do. So, again I'd say..
Kelly: So, have you read, how do people figure out what they're going to do? I mean how do you, if you're going to boil it down into a formula of some sort, what would it be?
Bill: Well I think you talked about callings, and I think that's part of it. What's the tug, you know? What do you do when people don't pay you. What do you listen to when people don't pay you, what do you read when people don't pay you.


What do you spend time and attention on? You know, I remember reading a story about Walt Disney and the same thing happened to him. He was bed ridden because he was delivering papers one morning in his cold Kansas or where ever he grew up, place, and he was walking along and he kicked a clod of ice or something or snow.


And a nail went, a horse nail went into his foot. And he got infected, and he was bedridden and out of school for a couple weeks. And all he did was just draw cartoons the whole time.


You think, well, OK, that's a little bit of a hint. If what you do when you can't do anything else, you're still doing.. and he's feeling miserable, he's a fever, and he's infected, and he's drawing cartoons all day.
Kelly: Oh, that's great.
Bill: And he's drawing cartoons in the back of class, instead of doing his homework. And you think, well that's silly. I just saw this morning I was watching television alone, and I saw this guy who's a snowboarder, in the Olympics and he just won the gold, American guy.
Kelly: Which one, what's his name?
Bill: Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't even get his name, but, you know, his mother encouraged him to snow board.
Kelly: Seth. Seth.. [inaudible]
Bill: She encouraged him like even in his crib, she'd turned it into like a trampoline. Because he liked to bounce. And you think, I had a kid that liked bounce, I never thought about turning his crib into a trampoline.


It's an interesting thing, so where does your energy naturally go. Without anybody paying you, without anybody telling you to do this, what is it, Steven Spielberg was making movies when was a teenager.
Kelly: Yes, my son is making one now, he's 16, he has written his script, he went out and got an agent. He's already gotten a part in a movie, he's going to community college at night, learning how to make films.


He asked me how much money I had.
Bill: [laughs]
Kelly: I said why? He said, you know, because "I need funding for my film."
Bill: I might need an investor, yes, I might need an investor, that's great. He's already on the road.
Kelly: Yes.
Bill: But, you know, and again what I would say is...
Kelly: See, I'm a different parent, I mean a lot of us didn't have parents that were supporting us.
Bill: Yes, because they said you do something practical, and you're not going to, you're not going to be a film maker.
Kelly: So, there's all the...
Bill: I mean one in three million be a film maker, so..
Kelly: Or you're too stupid, or...
Bill: So, you need to go, and do this, and do that. Yes, I think that..
Kelly: You need to go to trade school and learn to be a mechanic.
Bill: That's right, you've learned to trust that process and he may never end up being a film maker, but it may lead to the thing. Well, I have a friend whose kid was a skate broader, and, you know, always getting in trouble, the cops would call her house, he's chipped off another thing from the downtown library steps.


It's like, oh, but she didn't squelch it, and he went on and he didn't become a champion skate boarder, but he makes movies about skate boarding now. And he, that's how he makes his living. He makes movies, he follows the big skate boarders around and makes movies about them for DC Shoes, which is a skate boarding shoe company I guess.


And he didn't really become a skate boarder although it looked like that's where his direction was going. But, he got really interested in the graphic part. First, he took photos, then he started doing digital video when digital video came out and he got one of the first Macintosh's and he edited on.


It's like just let him follow that energy, follow that energy, you never know where it's going to go. I would have never predicted I would write books. I'm a little ADD and a little hyperactive...
Kelly Howell: [laughs]
Bill: It's hard for me to sit down and write. I wasn't a good writer. I loved to read, but I wasn't a good writer. And my passion took me there, and I just kept following it. Now, I actually really like to write, and I've gotten better at it. So, that's pretty good. It's the same thing with speaking. I was shy. No way! But my passion overcame my shyness, and now I've found my inner ham, and I love it.
Kelly: [laughs] Your inner ham is great.
Bill: [laughs] Thank you!
Kelly: Do you work with people privately? Do you do hypnosis with people..?
Bill: I used to. I was a therapist for 30 years, and I stopped my practice a couple of years ago becauseit's the same thing, I always follow this. I really liked doing therapy. I did hypnosis. I did a lot of hypnosis. I learned from Milton Erickson, who is an eccentric genius who took me under his wing when I was a student. I couldn't pay him anything, so I worked in his garden for bartering. I learned hypnosis really well, and I really enjoyed it.


And I learned a kind of psychotherapy that I later came to call solutionoriented therapy, which is focusing on people strengths and abilities rather than their deficits and problems and pathologies. That energy took me a long time. I love doing therapy. And then I got too busy, and I thought, "I'm doing six things. I'm doing supervision for people. I'm writing articles. I'm writing books. I'm making audios and videos, and I'm teaching, andsomething's got to go, because I have a personal life as well, [laughs] a family life, and I've got to stop something.
Kelly: Yes.
Bill: And the easiest thing for me to stop, because I was booked ahead for a year and a half or two years for workshops, and there were books in me that needed to come out, I thought: "Well, I'll just drop my clinical work for six months." Then, six months turned into three years, and I'm not doing it yet. I may go back to it, but I don't think so. I still keep my license, though.
Kelly: I'm just wonderingI asked you that because I thought, since we were talking about parents and upbringing and how it's very difficult for people to follow their passion if they have a lot of negative voices...
Bill: I agree, yes.
Kelly: What do you recommend that people do to get over that one hurdle? Which I think is probably one of the biggest hurdles, one's own negative thinking. The way we put ourselves down, or say, "Oh, I can't do that, " or, "Oh, that's ridiculous.".
Bill: Well, I think there are two ways. We already talked about the first one. You have something that's so big, it pulls you beyond and outside of your negative voice, even against your will. You go kicking and screaming...
Kelly: But your passion...
Bill: Your passion overcomes it. But then, sometimes you hit particular snags. You know, like, "I'm a little disorganized. My office is chaos." I keep waitingI'm 53 years oldI keep waiting for the time when my office will be clean. And it hasn't happened yet. But the rest of my house is clean. My wife really likes a clean house. And she's converted me, because I actually like cleanliness and order around me, I'm just not good at doing it.


So, every once in a while, my office is organized, but it only stays organized for a couple of days. That's a personality snag that I would like to overcome. And then, I'd probably have to work at it. Do your tapes. I'd have to do some work with those old, unconscious patterns and beliefs. And hypnosis is a great way to do that, I think, because there are certain things you can do very consciously, by your own efforts and by your own dint of will. You just work at it, and challenge it, and do very conscious things.


But sometimes there was a song I know by John David Sauder that says: "Sometimes, it's hard to see the spot you're standing on." It occurs to me, it's hard to see the spot you're standing on. Some of those old, unconscious beliefs and patternsthe only way there seems to be able to get to them is through a side door or back door. If you try and go directly at them, they just get more defensive. Or you just can't. It's like trying to look at yourself...
Kelly: You can't just wrestle with them straighton.
Bill: They're very hard. That's why I think things like what you're doing...
Kelly: See, when I got the vision to make audio, I had learned to meditate, I was doing selfhypnosis. I was doing a lot of different things, because I knew my mind and the subconscious was far bigger and more capable than anything my conscious mind was. And I just wanted to find out what was possible. And so, it was about a year of, really, starting for the first time in my life to do some deep inner work, that the vision came.
Bill: Yes.
Kelly: Now, my work didn't stop... [laughs]
Bill: Right.
Kelly: I had to continue to deal with my fears and resistance and doubts and my sabotage, and all of those things.
Bill: Well, again, I think what you just said it has two things that occur to me. The first thing is that, and there's been a lot of research on this: The conscious mind isif you think of the ocean, it's about the top inch of the ocean. And then, the unconscious, or subconscious, is the miles beneath that. So, what we're consciously aware of and what we consciously plan and thing and intend is a very, very small part of human life. So, you'd better be paying attention to that stuff that's down there, that's running the show for the most part. That's the first thing.


The second thing is: Freud sort of did us a disservice. He talked about the subconscious and unconscious mind, but he talked about it in such a discouraging and negative way. "You have to guard against these primal, id, violent, sexual impulses." And, when I studied with Erickson, he said: "Yes, OK, that's a part of the unconscious or subconscious. But the unconscious is resourceful. It's your warehouse of knowledge." It's a lot more positive than I had been taught about the subconscious and the unconscious, and you can work with it. You don't have to guard against it with your superego and your ego, as Freud had.


So, I think that the technology that's emerged in the last 30 or 40 years, or 50 or 60 years, for working with yourself in collaboration with your deeper self, with your unconscious, is a way different approach to the Freud approach, which was: "Defend against the unconscious, and make it conscious.".
Kelly: [laughs]
Bill: So that it won't run the show. And, actually, I like my unconscious to run the show most of the time. As long as...
Kelly: It's cleaned up. [laughs]
Bill: [laughs] As long as it's cleaned up. As long as it's not a mess.
Kelly: [laughs] You've got to keep it cleaned up.
Bill: As your person said, if it's all messed up, and you're working across purposes, or it's undermining or sabotaging you, then don't trust your unconscious. If you've got it aligned, trust your unconscious.
Kelly: I know you've got to go, but thank you so much for coming on the show.
Bill: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Kelly: I highly recommend Bill's CD, "Let Your Soul be Your Pilot." To purchase this CD, or find out more about Bill's many books and workshops, go to his site at www.BillOHanlon.com.


Next week, we've got Dr. Normal Shealy coming on the show to speak with us about how to overcome depression. He has an alternative approach that he's been very successful with, and we're going to find out all about it. So, stay tuned.