Psychologist Alexander Loyd recently reprinted his book, Beyond Willpower: The Secret Principle to Achieving Success in Life, Love, and Happiness as The Love Code, and it has some interesting and important life lessons you’ve probably never heard of.
Dr. Loyd explains that the cause of many of our individual problems, and the problems of the world, stem from stress. Stress may cause Between 90 to 95 percent of the disease, and it can have subtle effects on how we interact with others, and the paths we choose in life.
Most people seem to understand stress is the problem, which is why we try to find so many coping mechanisms – going to the gym, trying yoga, meditation, you name it. However, it doesn’t look like as a society things are improving.
When Dr. Loyd’s wife was diagnosed with clinical depression, things hit home. After 12 years of watching his wife try medication after medication, try natural solutions, and follow advice from doctors and fellow psychologists to no avail, he realized that there are two types of stress: internal and external.
“We’ve been treating external stress, and that’s what most people try to do,” he says in an interview with Joan Hermann. However, he found that “the cause of our problems is internal stress.”
He asks us to imagine two couples are sitting in the same restaurant, but the waiter never comes over to take their orders. The minute’s pass, and still no one shows up. One of the couples is just chatting and don’t even seem to notice and don’t care, but the other becomes angry, look around, they tap the table with their fingers, their face turns red.
“You can just see it; their blood pressure is going through the roof.” Dr. Loyd emphasizes “they’re under the same external stress, which is not being weighted on in a restaurant.” The difference is in how they react. It’s their internal stress that’s off. When that happens, everything in your body causes you to react like you’re in real, physical danger, even if we aren’t.
Dr. Loyd recommends using energy healing to reduce inner stress truly. Although it uses pressure points similar to acupressure, it’s quite different. The goal of manipulating energy is to do away with “cellular memories.” He believes internal stress comes from images and memory – memories of sadness, anger, fear, negative thinking. All those unhealthy emotions make an imprint on us on a physiological, cellular level.
A healthy lifestyle, positive thinking, and deep breathing can’t get to the core of these images and memory. Since they become a part of us, they act as a “warning system” for the future. We learn from our fears and anger, so they can’t just be wiped away with breathing exercises, even though deep breathing and positive thinking are beneficial to your health in other ways.
“You need to heal the source as well.”
If you want to find out the energy healing techniques he uses, you can read more in his book, but he also wrote several tips for Mindbodygreen.
- Act out of love, not out of fear – in essence, Dr. Loyd is saying that so many people decide what not to do because they’re afraid. Maybe they’re afraid of failure, think about worst case scenarios and fall away from doing something out of love for themselves or others. Put fear aside to love.
- Change your inner programming – most people haven’t been living in a very spiritual way, and they seem to depend too much on their willpower. He thinks that’s not enough to get your “Aha transformation”– the heart and mind are what rule our bodies, so change your programming to let love do its work.
- Don’t blame yourself – he sees this as a useless emotion.
- Addressing external stress won’t solve your problems – it is the internal stress you need to solve, that’s the true source of your issues in life.
- Don’t set external goals, make them internal – your goals should relate to love, and happiness, not work or money.
- Do things for others without asking how you’ll gain – most people base their actions off of selfishness. Act with selfless love instead.
- If you feel happiness, love, and are at peace, your life will fall into place, and you’ll find success without having to force anything.
Dr. Loyd lives by his work and advises his patients to follow his code, too. The secret to loving others and yourself can’t be found in exercise programs, diet, healthy foods to eat, or any other external factors. Love and spirituality are closely linked, and neither is tied to the physical, rather, it’s all internal, and that’s where you have to start to grow.