I had an incredible situation yesterday that is a perfect analogy for the damage unforgiveness does.

My laptop has been running quite slow recently and it was also running out of disk space.
So yesterday I decided to try and dump a whole lot of stuff off it and find out why it was so slow.
I deleted a bunch of obviously unnecessary stuff ands the thought I’d defrag it to see if that helped with the speed.

My defragger kept saying I needed to defrag but as I only had 13% free space on the drive it couldn’t do the job properly, it required 15%.

So I spent hours and hours deleting files, deleting emails, copying files to Raewyn’s computer in search of this elusive 15% free space.

I got to 14.5% and thought I’d let it run anyway. When it finished it came up and said “some files couldn’t be processed”, and gave me the choice of close or view report.

(Stick with me there is a point here).
I accidentally hit view report instead of close and so I was suddenly looking at a huge list of files inside a folder I had never heard of.
So now I began a journey to find out what these files were and where they were hiding.

The rest of the story is long but I eventually established late last night that I had a piece of software doing invisible backups to a hidden encrypted partition on my hard drive.

Once I discovered this and deleted the back ups I went from having 10.1 gig of free space on my 80 gig hard drive to having 57 gig of free space. UNBELIEVABLE!!

Now this is EXACTLY what unforgiveness is like.

Unforgiveness goes below our conscious mind and starts to compile files of every bad thing that has ever happened to us. It takes on a life of it’s own and often decides that someone who is looking at you funny is actually thinking bad things about you and adds that tot eh list, (even though they simply had a glass eye). If someone hurt you who was tall male and dark haired, over time every dark haired tall male in your circle becomes a potential offender.

Over the years this unforgiveness starts to “fill us up” and we have no space to take on goodness, love, laughter etc., because our drives are full.

I see people like this every day virtually. They erupt over nothing, cause road rage incidents, take all and sundry to court, burn relationships, you name it.

They are often referred to as type “A” personalities. In more cases than you would think they are actually running on hate and unforgiveness.

The parallel between my laptop and this issue is perfect because the real causes are hidden and can sometimes take a lot of weeding out.

But when you can actually find the offending files and delete them the freedom that comes, the space that gets created in your mind and spirit are AMAZING!! My laptop is running like new again.

I was on the verge of getting a new one when all I needed to do was find the hidden problem. Incidentally most marriages end through the same situation. We trade each other in because we aren’t willing to get to the real issue and it is nearly always unforgiveness.

You are forever changed once you can delete the bad data.

I hope you will forgive me if I take a few days over this but I take it very seriously so if I’m going to tell you about it I want to do it properly.

So step 1 today is to decide whether you think you have an issue and if you’re willing to explore what it might be.

So when you have a few minutes do this. Close your eyes and think of the worst thing that has ever happened to you. (If you can immediately think of many many things that have happened to you and people who have offended you then you definitely have an unforgiveness problem.)

Now think about the person who offended you in that situation, picture their face, remembering that this is only in your mind so no one else will ever know think about what you would like to do to them if you saw them. If you could take any action and get away with it what would you do??
This will expose your true feelings and be a good barometer of whether you have unforgiveness toward them.

Now this event may be a violation of your body or soul, something extreme, however it may not. When I published my video blogs I received many emails from people who had found healing through the process who didn’t have “terrible” things happen to them.

One lady had been adopted and she realised she had never forgiven her parents for abandoning her. She said after doing so she felt, “better”, “different”, at peace.

So once you have done that write down the event and the person, use a code for privacy’s sake, just enough to remind you of who and what. Now do this for as many events come to mind. Take whatever time you need, minutes, hours, days, get your list of people who have hurt you as complete as you can.

Step 2 tomorrow.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

So what is the answer to dealing with hurt?? Well it is summed up in one word, forgiveness.

I’ve worked for over 25 years now with people who have been crippled by unforgiveness and seen so many of them completely set free from all kinds of dysfunction as they embrace the freedom that forgiveness brings.

A friend of mine emailed me about a 20/20 story just this week that apparently highlighted this very issue. His comments were:

I don’t suppose you saw 20/20 on TV on Thursday night? There was a segment there on a family in America who had an opportunity in court to address their daughter’s (sister’s) convicted murderer. The murderer was the father of the victim’s two year old child

The victim’s sister expressed her hatred, and her inability to forgive the killer. The killer was expressionless and made no eye contact

The mother, with extreme difficulty, managed to express her desire to the killer to forgive him. An amazing achievement! She even managed to elicit some slight expression and emotion from the killer!

The next clip was an interview with the daughter saying how she felt empty and unsatisfied with her face-to-face.

In comparison the final shots were of a mother who had taken over the parenting of the orphaned grandchild, had moved on, and was able to start enjoying her life.

What she managed to do must have been so difficult, but the outcome was so satisfying and worthwhile!….

You see forgiveness works, no need to spiritualize it or anything, it just works.

I ran a video blog series on this issue, you can watch the main ones by clicking below

Unforgiveness
Getting ready to forgive
Coming to grips with forgiveness
Forgiveness continued
Forgiving ourselves

For those of you who don’t do video lets start to look at what forgiveness is and more importantly what it isn’t so that you can begin your journey if you need to.

Firstly understand that unforgiveness hurts one person, YOU!!
I have worked with people who have harboured unforgiveness against people who have been dead for years. Do the dead people feel bad for what they did?? No they are dead. The only life being affected by unforgiveness is the victim.

So understand that first off. We need to learn to forgive for our own sake, not the other persons. In fact in most cases the person we are hating has no idea that they even did anything wrong.

The second thing to understand is that forgiving someone is not saying that what they did was ok, or something that should be forgotten about. Forgiving them is actually removing the power that they currently have over you by releasing them from our judgment.

You won’t get excited about this idea till you get to the end of the process but trust me, you will never be the same again.

So tonight just think about this introduction and tomorrow we’ll get into more detail.

If you want some comprehensive teaching to walk right through this process I taught it at Behind Closed Doors, available on DVD HERE

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

Following on from my recent blog about dealing with issues I thought I would talk a bit about dealing with hurt.
I had an experience recently which reminded me of this. I know someone who was terribly hurt in their late teens by being badly treated by church leadership.
They never learned how to deal with it so now 20 years later they are still trapped in it’s jaws. In their particular case it comes out as nasty and attacking behaviour directed at well, just about anybody.

You see when we get hurt a process begins and unless we learn to stop and reverse the process it continues to the end.

The progression with some variations goes like this:

1. You get hurt. Thi sis a valid experience if you have been wronged.

2. You get angry. The sense of injustice starts to arise in you. This was not fair.

3. You become bitter. If you don’t know how to deal with this it turns into clinical bitterness. Bitterness starts to forget the actual event and culprit and just starts to poison you.

4. You become either very depressed or overtly angry.
Depression is the internal expression of bitterness.
Evil speaking, angry outbursts, attacking others is the outward expression of bitterness.

5. Here hurt takes 2 different paths. Internalisers generally become medicated and eventually turn to suicide as a means to relieve their pain.

Externalisers typically become vengeful and destructive. In business they become nasty, litigious and obsessed with money. In their personal lives they become sexually deviant and usually very violent. They also often become suicidal but it is probably more common for them to end up as alcoholics, in gangs or in jail.

I mention this all to you because you may be living with someone displaying some of these behaviours and I want you to understand they are not “bad” people, they are hurt people who have never learned how to deal with their pain.

Some of the most destructive people and events on this planet will have hurt people at the core of them.

Or maybe you are one of these people. Well I have great news, there is a solution. Sadly not many people are taught how to deal with this, but you can be free from it and no I’m not going to say the only answer is Jesus

Because I understand hurt I find it easy to have compassion on people who behave in this way, they need help not judgment.

And there is an answer, in fact it is a remarkably simple answer. And it works 100% of the time for all those who would try it. I’ll share it with you tomorrow.

Till then Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www,massiveaction.co.nz

I met a lovely lady yesterday who has been in real estate for under a year.
I was expecting the usual “how hard things are” conversation but she couldn’t have been more up beat.

It was interesting to me that as she had recently come into the industry and was obviously generally positive she didn’t have any baggage to bring to the job.
Having sold 17 properties recently and having had her most recent listing sell on auction night under the hammer her impression of the market right now is that she is surprised how many people are coming through open homes in mid winter, there is strong interest in good property and she can’t understand the nonsense in the media.

So I know I’ve said it for nearly 3 years now but the most important thing in investing is the real estate between your ears.

Talking real estate there is a real shocker going to hit the media probably today that will get the doom and gloomers excited, just remember that even in booms, some developments fall over. It does not mean we all have to jump off the nearest bridge , it means we have to bargain hunt while the bargains last.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

PS The money news on the other hand just keeps getting better. This today from Goodreturns

Rate changes have slowed to a trickle over the past week as the mortgage market settled following the latest cut in funding costs.
Most of the changes of the past few days have been from non-bank lenders. These lenders were generally slower than the banks to move rates after the fall in wholesale funding costs prompted by the Reserve Bank’s prediction on 5 June that the official cash rate (OCR) would be coming down by the end of the year, earlier than anticipated.

Some of the reductions coming through from the non-banks have been steep; United Home loans for example has reduced rates on one, two and five-year terms by 50 basis points.

Economists are continuing to recommend that those who need to refinance now should look to fix for six months or one year in the hope that cheaper funds will be available at the end of those terms.

Westpac has trimmed its six-month rate by 10 points to 9.75% where it sits in the mid-ground of prices over this term. Rates over six months now range from 9.6% to 9.95%. Rates over one year range from 9.3% to 10.95%.

So now is the time to talk to Kris, the world’s greatest broker , and get your next IP loan pre-approved for NZ or Oz. Kris is on 021300192.

Just returned from the official launch of my new company GPS.
It’s wonderful for me to be able to offer people an alternative to NZ knowing that the results they will get are so predictable and outstanding.

In fact as I think back over the last 3 years I am greatly humbled when I think of the number of people whose lives are forever changed for the better partly with my assistance. Not everything goes right but when you try to apply principles that are “true” and try to do what you genuinely believe is best, then good things happen a lot more than bad things. And more importantly I guess when you live a principled life then even when things go wrong you can keep going knowing that those same principles will work regardless of what you see in front of you.

It can be a little hard to explain but to give you an example.
We all want to be happy and successful right??
So millions of people have bought, read or attended “The Secret”. Now if “The Secret” actually worked, in other words if it was a principle then there would be millions and millions of wealthy healthy successful people added to the healthy and wealthy list in the last couple of years presumably.

But because there is no Secret, there is no underlying principle of truth under it it doesn’t work and 99% of people get no results.

Other people believe that more traditional NLP is the answer so they go off to Tony Robbins or any one of thousands of other NLP practitioners. Now NLP does have an underlying principle that works in certain circumstances so some people get helped. However rarely do people who have serious issues get helped. In fact I know several NLP practitioners whose lives are disasters.

So I do not embrace either of these “methods” of dealing with issues because they are not “principled. What I do believe is that if you are dysfunctional you need genuine healing, which may involve forgiveness, restitution and a range of other things.

Now the principles underneath this are 100% provable and sound. So at Behind Closed Doors for example the people who dealt with their unforgiveness are forever free and changed.

They don’t have to say a mantra, pay anyone any money or visit anywhere, they just have to apply the principle that forgiveness unlocks anger and bitterness etc. and brings healing to a wounded spirit. It’s like gravity, it is principle of truth.

So that’s why I love principled living. It can be hard, it can be challenging, but it’s awesome!!

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

And the funniest/sickest part is it is just about 100% true!! (Thanks again Josko)

REST OF THE WORLD VERSION

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE END

THE NEW ZEALAND VERSION

The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.

A social worker finds the shivering grasshopper, calls a press conference and demands to know why the squirrel should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, are cold and starving.

TVOne shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food.

The New Zealand press informs people that they should be ashamed that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.

The Labour Party, Greenpeace, Animal Rights and The Grasshopper Housing Commission of New Zealand demonstrate in front of the squirrel’s house.

TVOne, interrupting a cultural festival special from Christchurch with breaking news, broadcasts a multi cultural choir singing ‘We Shall Overcome’.

Tame Iti rants in an interview with John Cambell that the squirrel got rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the squirrel to make him pay his ‘fair share’ and increases the charge for squirrels to enter Melbourne city centre.

In response to pressure from the media, the Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The squirrel’s taxes are reassessed. He is taken to court and fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as builders, for the work he was doing on his home, and an additional fine for contempt when he told the court the grasshopper did not want to work.

The grasshopper is provided with a Housing Commission house, financial aid to furnish it and an account with a local taxi firm to ensure he can be socially mobile. The squirrel’s food is seized and re-distributed to the more needy members of society – in this case the grasshopper.

Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrel has to downsize and start building a new home.

The local authority takes over his old home and utilises it as a temporary home for asylum seeking cats who had hijacked a plane to get to New Zealand as they had to share their country of origin with mice.

On arrival they tried to blow up the airport because of New Zealand’s apparent love of dogs.

The cats had been arrested for the international offence of hijacking and attempted bombing but were immediately released because the police fed them pilchards instead of salmon whilst in custody.

Initial moves to make then return them to their own country were abandoned because it was feared they would face death by the mice.

The cats devise and start a scam to obtain money from people’s credit cards.

A 60 Minutes special shows the grasshopper finishing up the last of the squirrel’s food, though spring is still months away, while the Housing Commission house he is in, crumbles around him because he hasn’t bothered to maintain it. He is shown to be taking drugs.

Inadequate government funding is blamed for the grasshopper’s drug ‘Illness’.

The cats seek recompense in the New Zealand courts for their treatment since arrival in New Zealand.

The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dog during a burglary to get money for his drugs habit. He is imprisoned but released immediately because he has been in custody for a few weeks. He is placed in the care of the probation service to monitor and supervise him.

Within a few weeks he has killed a guinea pig in a botched robbery.

A commission of enquiry, that will eventually cost $10 million and state the obvious, is set up.

Additional money is put into funding a drug rehabilitation scheme for grasshoppers.

Legal aid for lawyers representing asylum seekers is increased.

The asylum seeking cats are praised by the government for enriching New Zealand’s multicultural diversity and dogs are criticised by the government for failing to befriend the cats.

The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose.

The usual sections of the press blame it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity and his traumatic experience of prison.

They call for the resignation of a minister.

The cats are paid $1 million each because their rights were infringed when the government failed to inform them there were mice in New Zealand.

The squirrel, the dogs and the victims of the hijacking, the bombing, the burglaries and robberies have to pay an additional percentage on their credit cards to cover losses, their taxes are increased to pay for law and order, and they are told that they will have to work beyond 65 because of a shortfall in government funds.

Well the first no-doc product came back into the market yesterday, up to 70% LVR but already the investor products are returning. YAY!!

I expect things will be weird for a little while but it is increasingly looking like I predicted that it won’t be a long while so get into any bargains before the media sentiment starts to change, because it will turn quite quickly.

I met with some good friends of mine yesterday and they had just returned from the USA and had visited some areas with great growth, huge cashflow and high demand. You never hear about that on our news do you. The fact is that the sub-prime has done it’s worst in the USA and things are recovering already.

Australia is simply not hit by it hardly at all. Markets are a little patchy there currently in some states but there are huge opportunities and their finance markets are fine.

We will follow, do ya hear, we will follow.

Get ready to buy your next property, the bargain basement window will slam shut soon I reckon, don’t wait too long. And if you need lo-doc money Kris is only a phone call away 021-300192. He can help nationwide and even has an office in OZ!!

Stay safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz