One of the most notable blocks we all share is the way we have been trained to attach to the stories of our lives to define us and to explain why we have the problems we have.

Have you ever found yourself able to thoroughly explain the reason why you have a problem in terms of your personal history but not be able to be free of the problem? It can be disheartening to discover that freedom cannot be found in the reasoned explanation of our personal history.

I wonder if this form of thinking was so prevalent before Freud and the subsequent development of psychology and therapy? Apparently we have missed something if successful explanation doesn't yield freedom.

My offering to you for your contemplation is to look elsewhere for your freedom from fear, stress, and distress. Look to your view of life -- your most influential belief about the nature of life and your place in it, and to your intention for your life -- your deepest abiding intention that effects every choice you make. These three elements determine the contents of your life's operating manual.

Before we begin a journey, we need to understand where we are and what our intention is. It is important to recognize that all beings want to have happiness and avoid suffering, and that all beings are subject to birth and death, regardless of differences in their personal history.

Contemplating and appreciating this simple fact can reduce our sense of fear and alienation as we see that we are essentially the same and are in the same boat. Having these simple insights as our background awareness can prevent us from getting too absorbed in melodrama in our daily life as if our daily life was happening in isolation, and as if it was eternal.

Instead, with this background awareness, our struggles and disappointments remind us that our struggles are not uniquely ours, but that we are experiencing the shared struggles of embodiment with all beings. This awareness reduces anxiety because we don't so easily take disappointments personally. We see them as part of the human experience, not as our own unique flaw.

Are there habitual ways in which you have considered yourself uniquely flawed? What happens if you reinterpret these "flaws" as just part of the human experience shared by everyone, and KNOWN by everyone -- that is, not unique and not hidden, or requiring hiding.

These "flaws" don't diminish your value, or your right to exist, or your right to full self-appreciation. They don't diminish the friendliness of the universe towards you, or your rightful access to abundance either.

I invite you to take an inventory of the things that are holding you back. Evaluate to what degree these things seem "big" in your life because you have in your background awareness the belief that your are uniquely flawed and must hide your flaws. Release that belief, or any belief that isolates you from the awareness that you are participating in a shared human experience that is fragile and temporary.

Experience how having a background awareness of shared experience, with all its fragility and temporariness fully taken to heart, changes your state and possibly your priorities. Add to this a respectful new self-conception that includes respect for everyone else and a desire for all to be free from suffering and to realize self-love. Practicing these attitudes will open the floodgates of happiness in your life.

Jack Elias, a Clinical Hypnotherapist in private practice, is founder and director of The Institute for Therapeutic Learning, a licensed Vocational School in Seattle that trains and certifies Transpersonal Clinical Hypnotherapists. Jack presents a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western perspectives on the nature of consciousness and communication, teaching simple yet powerful techniques for achieving one