ARC Part 8: How to Increase Affinity, Reality and Communication with Yourself
Your success in life depends on how you feel about yourself. How high your ARC is for you!
Without ARC for yourself, you can suffer in many ways.
• You constantly criticize yourself.
• You worry what people think of you
• You hate being alone.
• You have many regrets.
• You have few friends.
• Your thoughts are mostly negative. “I’m an idiot.” “My face is ugly.” “I’m not good enough.”
• You might wonder why anyone could ever love you. “If people learn how horrible I am, they won’t like me.”
• You punish yourself harder than anyone else.
However, you CAN increase ARC for yourself. You can be your best friend forever. Your success depends on it!
“In order to have an understanding of yourself, you must have good ARC with yourself.”
“It is not evil to like yourself or love yourself.”
“A healthy state of being is to be a friend to yourself.” — L. Ron Hubbard
When you are your best friend, you enjoy more success. If you hate yourself, you fail.
For example, if you say to yourself, “I’m obese because my self-control sucks. I can’t stop eating junk food and I eat a lot of it. Stop it you fat cow!”
This won’t help you. In fact, it creates stress and depression. You only eat junk food to feel a little happier.
If you increase ARC for yourself, you might have thoughts like these.
1. “OK, I love myself, bad habits and all.”
2. “I eat junk food to feel better, and that’s understandable.”
3. “I’m actually a strong person. I can keep promises.”
4. “So I promise to make myself feel better with self-love. If I feel depressed, I won’t eat anything but will just smile at myself in the mirror for a full minute.”
5. “If that helps, great. If not, that’s fine too. Either way, I’ll still love myself. I’ll stay in ARC with myself.”
As a result, you feel happier and may lose weight. If you don’t lose weight, you don’t mind. Your ARC for yourself does NOT change.
Can You Have More ARC for Yourself?
Ask yourself these twelve questions
Affinity
1. Are you proud of being you?
2. Are you your own best friend?
3. Do you love yourself?
Reality
4. Do you agree with how you act?
5. Are you honest and real with yourself?
6. Do you keep promises you make to yourself?
Communication
7. Do you communicate with yourself easily?
8. Do you spend time alone to sort out your condition, goals and progress?
9. Are your private thoughts kind and helpful?
Understanding
10. Do you understand why you do the things you do?
11. When you make mistakes, do you understand and forgive yourself?
12. If something bothers or upsets you, do you take a few minutes to understand your feelings before reacting?
If you say “No” to any of these questions, you are in for a treat! You have room for improvement. You will enjoy how easily you can boost ARC for yourself.
Dr. Black’s career was saved by increasing ARC for himself.
Doctor Black’s Secret
Dr. Black is performing a minor surgery in a small hospital near his office. But because of his hangover, Dr. Black almost kills his patient with an anesthesia error. Luckily, his nurse sounds the alarm before it’s too late.
She says, “Dr. Black! The patient’s face is grey. She’s not breathing! Is she getting too much sedation?”
Dr. Black’s eyes suddenly widen with fear. “CRAP! Oh no. I’ll fix it. CRAP!” He springs into action.
The patient soon starts breathing. Dr. Black and his nurse are relieved. He completes the procedure, changes his clothes and leaves the hospital.
As he’s walking to his office, he thinks, “Wow, I need a drink! I feel horrible.”
But then he realizes he just came within seconds of not only losing a patient, but losing his license, all of his possessions and his reputation. “I could even go to prison for manslaughter!” This is the shock he needs.
Dr. Black is a bad physician with many secrets. He became a doctor for the money and status. Because of his drinking problem, he barely graduated from medical school.
His ARC for himself is very low. He secretly hates himself. He has no understanding of what he’s doing.
So while sitting at his desk, he faces his biggest secret. “I’m a bad doctor, a fraud. I shouldn’t be operating on people. I can’t be trusted.”
Dr. Black suddenly gets up and goes up to his receptionist and says, “Cancel all my appointments for the next five days. Tell them I have an emergency situation. You can then go home early, okay?”
After his receptionists leave, he locks the doors and goes online to look for answers. He finds this article and thinks, “This is interesting. I’ve never thought about being my own friend.” Instead of beating himself up, which never works, he decides to first have ARC for himself.
He says, “Okay. Even though I’ve really messed up, I can at least be kind and understanding to myself. No one else will.”
He starts with affinity. “How can I increase my love for me? How can I be more of a friend to myself?”
This is not easy for Dr. Black, but he fights through his mental blackness and eventually thinks of a few things. “I mean well. I care about my patients. I think I can be a good doctor and help people.” His increased affinity helps face more facts.
He communicates with himself by writing down everything he is doing wrong. He lists his lies, his mistakes and his lack of medical knowledge.
He faces reality. “Wow, that’s a lot, but it’s a relief to face the truth. I need to become a good doctor. It might take a few years, but it’ll be worth it.”
His ARC for himself has been near the bottom for years, and now it starts to go up.
Over the next few weeks, he stops drinking, closes his practice and goes back to medical school. Even though avoiding alcohol is a struggle for him, constantly increasing ARC for himself truly helps.
He works hard and becomes an excellent doctor . . . with no secrets.
He earns the benefits of high ARC.
10 Benefits of High ARC for Yourself
1. You can act as your own personal support coach. As your coach, you encourage yourself to do better, to get more done and to face bigger challenges.
2. You enjoy spending time by yourself. You enjoy your own company and never feel lonely.
3. You have a level of self-respect that no one can reduce. If someone treats you with disrespect, you don’t care as your ARC for yourself is more powerful.
4. You can be fearless. If you feel emotionally injured or ruined by anything you tried to face but failed, your best friend quickly helps you recover so you can try again.
5. You can take better control of everything within your zone of responsibility. See Control Circle One.
6. You can create better relationships. When people can see you have high ARC for yourself, they feel more ARC for you. If they don’t, you are not bothered.
7. You do not compare yourself to others. You feel no envy or jealousy. You are completely content with yourself, just as you are.
8. Because you have more positive thoughts about yourself, and less negative mental thinking, your mind is open to improvement. You get more gain from education and self-improvement activities.
9. You are more valuable to others. Because you take care of yourself as your first priority, you are stronger, smarter and more able to help people.
10. You can truly be a better friend to yourself than anyone else can ever be. You are always there for you, through the good times and the bad, 24/7, even when your body eventually dies. A true best friend . . . forever.
10 Action Step Recommendations
Try any of these ideas that interest you. Find ones that increase your ARC for yourself and help you love yourself. Try and use ideas that help you to be your best friend.
1. From the list of 10 benefits above, pick the ones you want most. Now imagine earning and enjoying those benefits.
2. Have affinity for yourself, unconditionally. This means there are no conditions or requirements, such as, “After I have five more friends, I’ll like myself” or “If I would just stop smoking I’d be nicer to myself.” Instead say, “I love myself, right now, just as I am, flaws and all.”
3. Communicate with yourself like you would with a friend. Instead of spending hours online, watching TV or spending time with other people, give yourself more priority. Spend time communicating with yourself. Write down your private thoughts, problems and plans.
4. List the things you like about yourself. What are you proud of? What did you do right? How are you unique? Admire yourself for those things.
5. Every time you look at a mirror, give yourself a quick smile. You can say things like, “You’re a great person!” or “Hi best friend!” or “I love you, just as you are” or “You’re awesome!”
6. Forgive yourself for your mistakes, crimes, bad actions and poor decisions. Don’t beat yourself up, but be a rock-solid friend. Learn lessons from those incidents and move on.
7. If someone or something upsets or bothers you, increase your ARC for yourself. Boost your mood, reduce your stress and then act rationally.
8. If you feel ignored or unappreciated for something valuable you have done, pat yourself on the back and say, “Very Well Done!”
9. List the qualities you would want from your best friend. For example, you would probably expect your friend to forgive you, validate your performance and encourage you to succeed. Now be this friend to yourself.
10. Whenever you need to motivate yourself or boost your mood, give yourself an extra dose of ARC. Validate yourself, like a good friend would do, and enjoy the love.
One Advanced Recommendation
As you should know by now, to create a better working relationship, a better romantic relationship or a better friendship, you simply increase each point of the ARC Triangle.
To REALLY create successful relationships, you maximize your ARC as much as you can, as often as possible. You generate MORE affinity for the person. You agree with the person on as many topics as possible. You improve and expand your communication with the person.
As a result, you accomplish more with that person. You have more fun together. Your relationship is more valuable.
This works with yourself, as well. But, you can take self-ARC to a much higher level than you can with anyone else. You can TRIPLE the amount of ARC you have for yourself. You can love yourself as never before. You can be the friend you have always wanted!
Increasing your ARC for yourself is easy and fast. You can do it whenever you like, day and night. There is no downside or risk involved.
In fact, there is no limit to how much ARC you can have for you.
Go even further with this. Imagine increasing your ARC for yourself by 10 times! What might happen?
Go for it!
Learn more about ARC with the new video below.
