It’s a great feeling to finally feel yourself properly in the driving seat. You set the destination, you decide where you want to go and how and why, there’s no-one holding you back now, or ordering you around.

Which is when most people discover the next hurdle on the path: now they are starting to get some mental clarity, and a break from the backseat driver’s incessant instructions, nagging, small talk and general freak-outs about all things large and small, they find

they have no idea where they want to go. Or why. Or how they actually feel about the process of trying to get there.

It’s like that 17 year old who finally gets around to asking the cute girl out for a date, and after months of planning and hoping and waiting finds he has absolutely nothing to say to her when the big day comes around.

If you’re not prepared for this part of the journey, it can easily tip you head-over-heels and have you scrambling to invite the backseat driver back into the car again, so you can get past that panicked feeling of having no frigging clue about what you actually want to do in life, or how.

“Sure, I had all plans to drive down South and visit a bunch of cool canyons but now that I can actually just go right ahead and do, I’ve got cold feet. I’m not sure I want to spend a month of my time on a road-trip right now. I’m scared of what I’m going to find if I go. I’m even more scared of what I might come back to.

“Maybe, this emotional freedom is more hassle than it’s worth, and it’s easier to go back to just following orders and dreaming about freedom in theory…”

This is a really normal response, to that first taste of freedom.

That's why so many long-term prisoners baulk when they're finally released, and will do anything they can to get themselves back into jail as quickly as possible.

You’re being stampeded into a panic about what’s out there, and you’re probably also stressing about how you’re going to cope, and feeling pretty overwhelmed by all the things that you kind of relied on the backseat driver to take care of for you.

This is when it starts to dawn on you that kicking that guy out of the car was empowering, but maybe also the dumbest thing you ever did in your life. Because now there is no-one else to blame, there is nothing else to hide behind and the buck stops with you.

If you’re not prepared for that heady kick-back from your first real taste of freedom, it can knock you out cold. So many people turn tail and run when they’re finally given the key to open the door, and get out there a little, but that’s only because no-one ever told them that this feeling of overwhelming panic is just a stage.

If you sit quietly, and wait it out, it’ll pass. For some people, it may take a few minutes for the freak out to start to fade away, for others it may be more like a couple of hours, or a couple of days. But it won’t be more than that, and if you can get through this stage, you’ll be through maybe the biggest milestone on your quest for emotional freedom.

HERE, FIDO

​It’s like when you bring that cute puppy home from the pound in its plastic travel crate. The first time you open that box up, that cute critter is going to power out of there like Usain Bolt.

It’s going to run up the walls, wee in the corners and generally make you wish you’d just said ‘no’ to all the wheedling to get a dog.

Alternatively, it’ll push its way back, far, far back, against the wall of the carry crate, and not hell nor high water will get that animal to venture out into the wide open space of your yard. But just leave the door open, go about your business, and slowly but surely, he’ll start sniffing around and when he gets a little hungry, or he needs to attend to some present business, he’ll come out and make your acquaintance.

Whichever way your own internal ‘critter response’ is going to play out, trying to stuff the dog back in the box and shipping it straight back to the pound is not the answer.

You wanted that dog in your life because you wanted the benefit of getting your face all licked off when you open the door after a hard day’s hustle, and you wanted something warm and cuddly to hang out with and talk to. Maybe, you also wanted Buster in your life to give you a greater sense of security, and like someone, something, has got your back.

A dog can do a lot of good things for you. Persevering through those often difficult few days and weeks when you’re starting to get to know each other, and starting to figure out what each of you can bring to the relationship, and how best to relate to each other takes time and a lot of patience.

The same is true with your internal ‘critter response’. Those guys have been all boxed-up inside of you while the backseat driver’s been calling the shots for years. Now that you’re finally swinging the cage open, you can expect to feel messy and chaotic for a while, or panicked and all crumpled up at the back, scared to put a foot wrong.

But with a bit of coaxing, a bit of training, and a lot of patience, your critter response will turn around from crazy-making overwhelm, to giving you the best, most loyal and lickable best friend you ever had in your life.

​One of the things that causes us human beings a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain is when we have a relationship with someone we love or care for, that ends up going very sour.

Sometimes, this happens because we change or the other person changes and the two ‘halves’ just don’t fit together as a good whole anymore. Other times, the person hasn’t changed at all - but we suddenly wake up and realize that what we thought was normal, OK, or standard behavior from the
other person actually really wasn’t at all, and was doing us a lot of damage all along.

Whatever the reason for the relationship going sour, or being revealed as being negative, there’s always a lot of fall-out to deal with. On the one hand, there are still tender feelings, warm memories and some sort of hope that the warmth and kindness that either truly was there, or that was erroneously believed to be there, can be recaptured. On the other hand, there’s often a pressing need for us to now protect us from this negative person, and the negative vibes they’re sending our way, as much as possible.

Trying to keep these competing interests satisfied can drive even the most stable person a little insane, especially when you the relationship in question concerns close family members.

That’s where the following visualization exercise comes in very handy, as it enables us to express and ‘protect’ our warm feelings, while at the same time being able to come to terms with, and if necessary complete distance ourselves from, the now negative and damaging relationship.

So without any further ado, here it is:

1. Imagine the person that you are currently having difficulties or troubles with, at a time when you still had warm feelings towards them.
2. Once you have that picture of the other person in your head, enclose it in a rose-coloured glass sphere.
3. Send the picture of the person in the sphere all your love and warm wishes.
4. When you’re done, send that rose-coloured sphere back to God, somehow. (When I do this visualization, I usually like to toss it back up to Heaven). Have in mind that your past love for that person is being ‘stored’ in Heaven, and hasn’t been wasted or lost.
5. Now, bring to mind a picture or image of the person as you currently view them. (The person may appear very angry, demented or cold. Or if you’re more of a ‘pictorial thinker’, they may appear to look physically strange or disturbing, in some way. However they show up, don’t censor yourself - this is what you really think about them, at this stage in your relationship.)
6. Ask yourself: “Do I really want to have a relationship with this person, or be around them?”
7. If the answer is ‘no’, think of some way of getting them out of your headspace. (My personal favorite is to dunk them in a mikva, and watch them dissolve. Other people like to enclose them in boxes, steel balls and send them to outer space, or back to God. Again, let your imagination come up with the suitable method for you, and don’t censor yourself.)
8. If the answer is ‘yes’, continue the visualization by seeing what needs to change in the relationship, in order for that to happen. Discuss the situation with the ‘other person’ in your head. Say whatever you feel you need to say. Take whatever action is appropriate to defend yourself, or change things around.
9. When you’re ready, open your eyes.

As with all visualisations, you can learn a great deal about what’s really going on with your relationships by doing this. If things are really over, this exercise can help you to clear up any related lingering and conflicting sub-conscious issues, and deal with your feelings appropriately.

​If you get stuck at any time, ask God, or one of your favorite spiritual figures, like Rebbe Nachman, for example, for help.

Our frontal lobes are the home of the human ability to empathize with, and feel compassion for, other people. But there’s a particular area of the frontal lobes, called ‘mirror neurons’ that are crucial for developing our ability to empathise, imitate, synchronise our behavior with others, and to communicate.

(All these things are malfunctioning, in some way, when someone gets diagnosed as having a personality disorder.)

Mirror Neurons were discovered in an experiment done in 1994 by a group of Italian scientists. (G. Rizzolatti and L. Craighero ‘The Mirror Neuron System’, Annual Review of Neuroscience 27 (2004).

Writing in The Body Keeps the Score, author Bessel Van Der Kolk explains that: “One writer compared mirror neurons to ‘neural WiFi’ – we pick up not only another person’s movements but their emotional state and intentions as well.”

When the people we’re mirroring are healthy, happy, upbeat etc, that’s great. When they’re not, the mirror neurons are the ones that pick up on their negativity and bad character traits like anger, depression and self-hatred etc.

How mirror neurons are connected to personality disorders

When people aren’t being ‘mirrored’ or truly seen by others, and treated as though their needs, concerns and desires don’t count for anything, one of two things typically happens: either their mirror neurons never really activate, leaving them with a chronic lack of empathy and compassion for others (because they can’t feel them, or pick up on how the people are genuinely feeling.)

AND / OR they are overwhelmed by other people’s negative emotional states, and find it very difficult to put in the necessary barriers and boundaries required to keep other people’s negative moods out of their own headspace.

The people in the second category often struggle greatly with difficult emotional states, without realizing that the emotions they are feeling aren’t actually they’re own – they are picking up someone else’s bad mood via their mirror neurons.

(In case you were wondering, YES, this is all directly linked to how people develop so-called ‘personality disorders’. The first group lack compassion and empathy for others, which are the hallmarks of things like Narcissistic Personality Disorder and ASPD; the second group are overwhelmed with other people's emotions, making them prime candidates for a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis, or 'schizo' label.)

Social relationships can impact our mental health

Now, our body viscerally reacts to the voices and faces of the people we’re spending time with.  Even subtle changes in someone’s tone of voice, body language, or facial expression can trigger-off some severe physiological reactions in us.

To put this another way, social relationships, or how people relate to us, can have a HUGE impact on our mental health, via the physiological reactions they trigger in us with even the subtlest shift in expression, tone or body language. Our body picks up immediately the physical cues we are being sent by others, so we can quickly ascertain at the ‘gut’ level if someone is comfortable, threatening, scared, angry, welcoming etc.

To quote Van Der Kolk again: “Our mirror neurons register their inner experience and our own bodies make internal adjustments to whatever we notice.”

Our conscious mind often focusses in on the actual words that are being said, but our bodies are picking up a whole bunch of clues at the subconscious level that tells us what’s really going on. So if you feel uncomfortable around a certain person, it’s not all in your mind. On some level, you’re registering that this person is suspicious, threatening, frightened, difficult, or ‘unhappy’ on some level, and you begin to mirror that unease back at them.

What happens when you’re mirroring a disturbed parent?

Mirror neurons are operational and start picking up external signals immediately after birth – researchers have found them active even in 6 hour old babies.

When parents and babies are in sync emotionally, they’re also in sync physically – and vice versa. Van der Kolk explains that: “Babies can’t regulate their own emotional states, much less the changes in heart rate, hormone levels, and nervous system activity that accompany emotions.”

So when the parent is synchronized with their baby, and mirroring back their need for reassurance, calming, feeling safe, the baby mimics the physiology and emotional reactions of their parent. When this is disrupted, the first place it shows up is in the baby’s physiology – leading to disturbed sleep, disturbed eating patterns, ‘colic’ and general crying and unease.

But when the baby is NOT being mirrored, or given attention in that calm, reassuring way? Then the baby is being conditioned to believe that nothing they can do will bring the help, attention or caring they need, regardless of what they do to try to change things (the infamous ‘sense of agency’).

These babies are effectively being conditioned to give up, when they hit obstacles, stress and challenges later on in life. (Again, this is directly linked with the ‘FREEZE’ response that causes feelings of clinical depression.)

A quick way to tell if your mirror neurons are functioning OK

When your mirror neurons are healthy and functioning, when someone makes direct eye contact, the pre-frontal cortex starts the assessment process of the person who is looking at you, and then your mirror neurons kick in to assess what sort of interaction this person probably presents to you – friendly or aggressive, suspicious or reassuring, loving or angry etc.

(Mirror neurons pick up the intentions of other people, and can act as a very accurate ‘early warning system’ when we don’t allow our social programming, and fears about being ‘rude’, turn them off).
When people have severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), brain scanning experiments showed that their prefrontal cortexes don’t activate when someone looks directly at them – which is the part of the brain responsible for social engagement.

Instead, people with PTSD / off-line mirror neurons will look away instead, and go straight into an emotional ‘fight or flight’ response to being seen. This is often why, to quote Van Der Kolk for the last time: “Many traumatized people feel chronically out of sync with the people around them’.

It’s very hard to feel like you fit in, and to overcome your innate feelings of loneliness and isolation when even meeting someone’s gaze can potentially throw you into a ‘fight-flight-freeze’ response.

This is also a big part of why so many people today feel socially anxious, and I hope to tell you more about this when I return to this topic again, in future posts.

When you're doing a 'deeper' mind-map, like the Big Interview example I gave yesterday, the conclusions you can draw from these types of mind-maps tend to split into 2 categories:

1) Practical and functional

2) Insightful and transformative

For example, if you're super-worried about turning up late to your big meeting, then there are certainly practical, functional conclusions you can draw about the need to leave in plenty of time; or taking the bus instead of driving, so you don't need to waste time finding a parking spot etc.

These types of conclusions deal with the superficial concern on the day, but don't address the underlying emotional issue.

An insightful and transformative conclusion is something that doesn’t just tackle the symptom of the problem, but gets to work on the core.

Examples of a transformative type of conclusion for the Big Interview Mind Map could include:

• Making a commitment to trace the anxiety about being late back to its root.
• Using an energy psychology tool like Emotional Freedom Technique, or the Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT) to start defusing the excessive emotional charge and worry associated with being late.
• Getting God involved, and working on your emuna, (belief or faith), so that it's easier for you to accept that God's running the world, and you don't have to start beating yourself up or blaming yourself for being late, especially if you did everything you could to be on time.

You get the idea.

The final step of every mind map you do: Set yourself goals / action points

Again, this last step can be split into practical, functional action points that deal with tangible issues and problems; and / or more long-term goals or action points, that start to address the underlying emotions.

To continue with our 'scared to be late' example, the practical action points could include:

• Drive the route at the time you need to be at the meeting, but a day or two before, in order to get an accurate idea of how long the journey will actually take, and to scope out the parking facilities.
• Check the bus schedule.
• Make the necessary babysitting  or car pool arrangements, etc to enable you to leave at the right time, on the day of your interview.

The long-term goals or action points will vary from person to person, so the following is just to give you a flavour of the sorts of things they might include:

• Set a deadline for yourself to do a mind-map solely on the issue of being scared to be late.
• Take the free, JEMI 'Talk to God and Fix Your Health' online course, to get more of a feel of where the fear of being late is really coming from.
• Commit to talking to God for a minute every day about dissolving your irrational fear of being late.
• Do a TAT session, solely on the issue of being petrified of being late.

Whatever type of action points you come up with, pin yourself down! Don't make wishy-washy statements, instead make serious commitments, attach a deadline to them, and then do your best to achieve them.

If you don't manage to achieve all of your action points or goals, don't get discouraged. Go and talk to God about what's really going on, do another mind-map, talk things over with a close friend that you trust, and you'll see that one way or another, things will start to move again.

Deeper mind-maps

OK, now we've seen how to apply mind-mapping easily to decluttering our brains and our homes from all the stuff we need to do, organise, clean, sort out.

You can use mind-maps any time you feel overwhelmed, and need to prioritise what to do first, or next. But you can also use mind-maps for more deeper things, and that's what we're going to try to do now.

The second mind-map we're going to do is called:

The Big Interview

At some point or other, you'll probably have to participate in some sort of big interview, or meeting. It could be for a new job, a new school, a blind date, a meeting with your kids' teacher, a talk with your bank manager to try and get a mortgage.

Many people find these types of interviews and meetings nerve-wracking, and they can bring up a lot of difficult emotions and surprising reactions. If you do a mind-map beforehand, it can help you to work through how you want the interview to go, and also help us you to identify any possible problems or big issues, and work on them, before you even get there.

This is an example of how a mind-map can help you to catch your deep-seated emotions, and deal with your subconscious responses, BEFORE they could trip you up on the day itself.

Exercise 2: The Big Interview Mind-map

Step 1:  Take your sheet of paper, and put the words 'The Big Interview' (or big meeting) in the middle of the page, in a circle.

Step 2: Get God involved in whichever way you're comfortable with, as outlined in Step 2 of the first example, above.

Step 3: Now, you're going to free-associate. Without over-thinking (or thinking too much at all…) just write down whatever comes to mind, as you think about the upcoming interview or meeting. Even if it sounds a bit 'weird', unrelated, or 'out there', write it down. These seemingly extraneous pieces of information are often hiding some very deep issues and ideas.

Step 4: Now, take each of the categories you've written down around your 'hub', and give them a rank out of 10. 1 is 'not at all distressing, disturbing or stressful', and 10 is 'maximally disturbing, distressing or stressful'.

Do this spontaneously; your unconscious mind will write down your truthful response, if you get yourself out of the way enough to let it.

Step 5: Now, try to associate a feeling, or emotion with each think you've written down. For example, if you wrote down:

Don't know what to wear - what emotion or feeling is that actually conveying? Are you scared of looking stupid? Or doing something wrong? Or being judged harshly?

Go through each thing, and try to catch the underlying emotion, feeling or concern. Write it down next to it.

Step 6: Start to prioritise

Mind-maps are as much an art as a science, especially when dealing with emotional states. Now, you're looking for a theme or a priority that's weaving its way through your reaction to the big meeting or interview.

Is there a particular feeling or issue that keeps coming up, repeatedly, in different places? Like worried you'll look stupid? Or, scared you'll do something wrong and mess it up? Or, scared of 'failing', in some way?

If that turns into a dead end for you, try another tack: go back to your ranking system, and see which issue, or issues, carry the most weight for you. If anything's got a high number beside it, pay it some attention, and look to see what's the related emotion or underlying fear?

That's your priority.

Step 7: Draw your conclusions

Again, this mind-map example is just a guide, and shouldn't be taken as THE blueprint of how to do these types of mind-maps. Be guided by your intuition, and your soul.


In the next and final part of this guide to mind-mapping, we'll sum up what we've learnt about mind-maps, and how you can apply them to the different parts of your life.

Exercise 1: The preparing a birthday party mind-map

The thought of preparing for a birthday party, event (or whatever other big project you're working on, or avoiding, or procrastinating about) is usually far more overwhelming than the actual doing of it. Like every project, once you set down the parameters of what's actually required, it stops being so scary and anxiety-provoking, and it shrinks down into something manageable, and even, maybe enjoyable.

So let's shrink this birthday party sucker down into something doable, and start breathing again.

Step 1: Take your piece of paper (larger is usually better, at least A3 size)

Step 2: Get God involved in the process, in whatever way you're comfortable with. Some people like to write 'with God's help' in the top corner of their mind-map; others will just send out a quick thought that God should help them to get the answers they need; still others will put a few coins in their charity box. Whatever works for you is fine.

Step 3: Next, put 'preparing the birthday party' or 'my birthday party prep' or something like that, in a circle in the middle of the paper, and put a circle round it. Remember this is a blue-print for an organisation mind-map, and you can use the steps described here for any organisation task or job, from cleaning out your closets; to sorting out all your financial papers; or rearranging your whole human resources department.

Step 4: You can do the next bit however you like:

• break it down by tasks
• break it down by categories
• break it down by priorities

Break the project's different components down into smaller elements in whichever way you want, just make sure it reflects your actual style. For example, if you want to break 'birthday party prep' down into tasks, the next stage of your mind-map will look like this:

The idea is to arrange the related tasks or elements around your central mind-map theme, the same way spokes are around the central hub of the wheel. Each idea is connected to the main idea, but it's going off into its own sphere, and will have its own separate considerations and elements.

You can use different colour pens for each separate task or category, to really start bringing it to life.

Step 5: The next step is to see if you need to breakdown your main categories further, into smaller sub-categories. For example, 'Catering' is one of the things you have to organise for the birthday party. But that's not the whole story.

So under 'Catering', you're going to either list all the things related to that particular task, or you're going to make 'Catering' the hub of a separate mind-map spoke. Whichever way you pick, the idea is have all the different elements of 'Catering' clearly set out, vis:

• Ask friends for catering recommendations
• Get quotes from caterers
• Check with the birthday girl or guy what food preferences they might have
• Set catering budget
• Check caterer's availability

Step 5: Start prioritising

Now, you need to start prioritising the list you just made under 'Catering'. Again, you can do this in a few different ways: some people may want to prioritise it in terms of importance; others, in term of what needs to be done first; others, in terms of how much time each particular thing is going to take, or how much money it's going to cost.

How you prioritise your mind-maps is going to depend on the goals you want to achieve.

In the 'Birthday Party' example, you might choose to prioritise like this:

1) Check with the birthday girl or guy what food preferences they have

2) Set catering budget

3) Ask friends for catering recommendations

4) Get quotes from caterers

5) Check caterer's availability

Often when you start to prioritise, that's when you'll start to get some very helpful insights. In this example, it could be that you'll be working on the catering, when you'll actually realise that you need to know where you're holding the party, before you can actually make that decision.

Are you going for a marquee on the lawn, or renting out a hall, or doing something more original and 'out there', like holding your party by the beach in a forest? Is there going to be an onsite kitchen, or does everything have to be pre-prepared?

Other insights will also flash up, like you need to think about if the weather is going to be hot or cold; or how many people you'd like to invite. If it's 14, you can afford to splash out a bit more on the food. If it's 400 - cheap and cheerful is the name of the game.

All of these insights start to coalesce into a big picture, that will actually guide you towards the right decisions, and the next steps you need to take.

Whatever organisation project you're working on, make sure that:

1) You're BEING HONEST about how you actually work, and your preferences, and your limitations;

2) Forget about 'SHOULD', and

3) Keep your priorities realistic.

Step 6: Draw your conclusions

This is where the real mind-map magic starts to work.

Maybe, you'll look at your 'to do' list for the birthday party, and you'll realise that you have loads to do, and not enough time to get it all done. You've just uncovered something profoundly useful, namely that you need some help in order to pull the project off.

Now, you can start to think about who might be willing to help you, and what things you might be able to delegate to them.

Or maybe, you'll realise that the birthday party you were planning out in your head is far beyond your budget or time constraints. If that's the case, you need to figure out a different sort of birthday party: maybe, it needs to be on a smaller scale? Or maybe, the catering could be less fancy? Or maybe, you decide it's better to scrap the idea all together, and spend the money taking the birthday guy or girl skiing for the weekend instead…

At this stage of the mind-mapping process, you should have enough information set out to help you to start drawing some conclusions about what needs to happen, when, and how.

Step 7: Set yourself goals / action points

The last step of the mind-mapping process is to turn your insights into a solid plan of action. Based on what you now know are your priorities, you can start to create a list of action points, and where appropriate, you can attach deadlines to them.

Some action points for the 'Birthday Preparation' mind-map could include:

• Set a budget for the party by the end of the week.
• Find a caterer by the end of next week.
• Get the invitations printed for 2 weeks' time; send them out in 3 weeks' time

And so on, and so forth.

Remember that the same basic recipe that you've learned in this example can be applied to any other organisational issue, problem or decision.

In the next example, you'll learn how you can apply the same basic mind-mapping principles to matters of the mind and spirit.

Deeper mind-maps

OK, now we've seen how to apply mind-mapping easily to decluttering our brains and our homes from all the stuff we need to do, organise, clean, sort out.

You can use mind-maps any time you feel overwhelmed, and need to prioritise what to do first, or next. But you can also use mind-maps for more deeper things, and that's what we're going to try to do in the next post.

The 10 Basic Rules of Successful Mind-Mapping

The following rules apply to every mind-map you do, regardless of whether it's simple, complicated, deep, practical, emotional, or whatever.

Rule 1: Get G-d involved  

All your help, all your insights, are going to come down the pipe from God. Time and time again, God has given me flashes of inspiration via mind-mapping that have been the 'missing piece' of the puzzle. Even if you don't know what you're doing, or you just feel completely stuck in a situation, decision, or problem, get G-d involved and He'll open up all sorts of ideas and possibilities for you.

Rule 2: Be honest

This is more important when you're doing deeper stuff, but even for the most simple, practical mind-maps, be as honest as you can. For example, if you know you don't want to spend more than half an hour cleaning up every day, don't set goals or targets that would require 2 solid hours of cleaning a day. Doing a mind-map based on incorrect or faulty assumptions and information might sound good, but it won't help you to actually change your reality.

Rule 3: Don't censor yourself

This is often connected to Rule 2, but is coming from the opposite direction. If you find yourself phrasing anything with a 'should' when you're doing your mind-map, stop and challenge the assumption: is it SHOULD or is it WANT? I SHOULD change jobs, or I WANT to change jobs? SHOULD usually shows up when we're trying to people please, or put other people's ideas and preferences ahead of our own.

Rule 4: You can't do this wrong

There is no such thing as a 'wrong' mind-map. Even if it doesn't turn out the way you planned; even if you can't seem to write what you wanted, or make sense of what's going on, each and every single mind-map contains myriad clues about what's going on in that area of your life.

EG: if you can't even begin to write down what needs to be arranged and taken care of before you can start to get your new business idea off the ground, that by itself is showing you that you're completely overwhelmed by the whole idea. If that happens, take a step back, and instead of doing a 'Next Steps For My New Business' mind-map, maybe do a 'why is this overwhelming me so much?' mind-map instead.

(And then book a long weekend away and a massage…)

Rule 5: No two mind-maps are the same

Mind-maps, as the name suggests, are a map of your mind. We're all different, unique, individuals, which means that everyone's mind-map - even for the same subject - will look and be completely different. Don't compare your mind-map to anyone else's. Your particular style and flavour of mind-map is reflecting your beliefs and personality back at, in precisely the way you need, in order for you to do or learn something, or make the change that might be required.

Rule 6: Judge yourself favorably

If a mind-map is really doing its job, it's going to show you some very honest things about yourself. Not all of your mind-map insights are going to earn you 'feel good' brownie points, and some of them may even be pretty disconcerting and uncomfortable.

The evil inclination just loves making people feel bad because they aren't perfect. Whatever secret ikky thing you discover about yourself via doing your mind-map, on no account should you start beating yourself up about it. On the contrary!

When you attain this sort of clarity about yourself, it makes God really happy. Whatever issues, character flaws or nasty traits you discover, there's a very good reason why you have it, you just don't know what it is yet. But God does. He's judging every single thing you do favorably, and He wants you to do that, too, and to be kind to yourself, and to not beat yourself up under any circumstances.

Rule 7: Keep an open mind

To put it another way: don't shoot your arrow, and then paint the target around it. The whole mind-mapping process is about discovering what's really going on inside of you, and in your mind, at the deepest levels. Let the process unfold, and give yourself the space you need to learn some new things about yourself and your true outlook and perspective.

Rule 8: Translate your mind-map into real time

At the end of each mind-map, write down a clear list of action points, targets, goals and deadlines, to help move your clarity from 'theory' to 'practise'. (I'll give you some exercises to do in the next post, that will give you some concrete ideas for how to actually do this.)

Rule 9: Pray on it

If anything awkward, difficult, overwhelming, shocking, surprising or challenging reveals itself in your mind-map, don't panic - just pray on it. If you suddenly realise that you actually really hate your job, or that a close family member's behaviour is distressing you far more than you ever realised, don't have a heart-attack. Take a deep breath, make space for G-d, and ask Him to show you how to resolve the particular problem, difficulty or issue. Then just wait for the amazing idea, or insight, or solution to pop into your head, or your life.

Rule 10: Write spontaneously

Don't over-think your mind-map. If when you're doing a mind-map, you're finding it very hard going, or not coming at all, it's usually because you're blocking your own answers and truths in some way, or feeling blocked by something or someone else. If you write something down on your mind-map and then cross it out - challenge yourself. Why are you changing your mind? Who or what are you scared of, if you keep your first answer? Why do you think it's wrong?

Whenever you catch a 'conflict' in your mind-map - it's a big red sign that you just hit an area where you need to do some more digging, to see what's really going on. Ask G-d for clarity, and keep probing. You'll get some answers, and when you do, you'll see how your insights into yourself, your self-confidence, and your perceptions start to change and improve.

That's it!


Tomorrow, you'll get to practise doing your first mind map.

What are mind-maps?

I've been doing mind-maps for more than 15 years, and I've done hundreds of them, both for myself, and also as a mind-map facilitator for other people. I first found out about mind-maps when a business consultant friend of mine told me about how useful they could be for organising the new PR business I was trying to set up at the time.

That first mind-map blew me away. It took all the stuff that was blocking up my head, and got it out of my brain, and down onto paper, in a way that made it so much easier for me to figure out what needed to happen, how, when, and why.

(This sort of organisational mindmap is invaluable for when you have a big project to do, and you need to set down clear processes, goals and priorities.)

So over the next few days, I'm going to teach you how to do your own mind maps, here on the JEMI website. But mind maps are NOT just about getting organised. You can also use them for some very profound emotional work, too.

Deeper applications for mind-maps

The beauty of mind-maps is that you can apply the same basic mind-mapping tools to almost every area of your life - even very deep emotional stuff. Mind-maps can also help you to find answers to big questions like: 'what do I want to really do with my life?' Or: 'what's going to really make me happy?' Or: 'what should my priorities in life really be?'

Questions like this can often seem so overwhelming and confusing, not least because so much seems to hanging on the final decision. Doing a mind-map can give you instant clarity about what's really going on in a particular area or your life; or how you might want a particular area of your life to improve or change.

You'll get detailed destructions for how do this sort of deeper sort of mind-map a little later on this week, in the 'Big Interview' mind-map example.

These sort of mind-maps can save you thousands of bucks in therapy bills; give you instant clarity and direction; and you can apply them to literally anything you want.

Another advantage to mind-maps is that once you learn the basic skills, you can also start showing your friends and families how to do them, too. But if you start facilitating other people's mind-maps, you have to remember one very important rule (especially if you're doing a mind-map where you have a personal interest vested in the outcome):

Each person's mind-map has to reflect their own ideas, opinions, preferences and desires - not yours!

Facilitate all you want, make suggestions, set a direction - but encourage the person you're helping to express what they truly think and feel, otherwise the mind-map won't reflect their reality, and will be a waste of time.

Example: The High School mind-map

Let's say you want to help your kid to decide what high school, college, or course to go to. As the parent, you probably have your own preferences, but in order for a mind-mapping exercise to work, you'll have to put all your ideas aside, and give your child the space to see what THEY really want.

This is often very hard for a parent to do, so if you can't approach the mind-map in a neutral way, either don't do, or get someone else to facilitate it.

But if you're happy to help your child to discover what they actually want and prefer, then a mind-map can be an amazing way of enabling your teen to find their own clarity.

In this particular example, the teen in question got some very useful insight into herself as a result of doing a mind-map, and realized she actually didn't want the 'top' school she'd applied to. As a result, she decided to go to a school that was more laid-back, academically, but otherwise a much better fit for her in every other way.

In the next post, I'll teach you the basic rules of how to do successful mind maps.

Personality Disorders, including narcissistic personality disorder, are so prevalent today for a few main reasons:

Reason 1: People have become disconnected from God, and from their spiritual dimension

This is maybe obvious, but the less God is in the picture, the more mental illness prevails. To put things very simply (and you could literally write a whole book on each of these subjects, but I'm trying to stick to basic concepts in this post) - the human soul can only function at its full potential and capability when it's connected to God in a real, tangible, fundamental way.

In a very real sense, God is the guardian of conscience. When God, and notions of spiritual 'reward and punishment' are out of the picture, then personal gain and selfish interests become the prevailing concern for the vast majority of people.

So that's the first reason personality disorders are so prevalent today, including within the Jewish community.

Reason 2: Bad emotional health habits are 'the norm' in our modern society


The bible identifies the three things that make someone emotionally healthy. They are:

• Healthy compassion
• Sensible accountability
• Appropriate kindnesses

(These topics are explained in detail in JEMI's free online course, 'Talk to God and Fix Your Health'). Cluster 'B' personality disorders are all characterised by a profound lack of empathy and compassion for other people.

Empathy means that you can see the other person's point of view, and compassion means that you feel other people's pain - both of these are usually either severely impaired or completely lacking, in people with a Cluster 'B' personality disorder.

But these days, they're also very hard to find in modern society as a whole.

Instead of embracing and encouraging compassion and empathy, modern society - with its emphasis on 'being in control' and 'perfection' and 'keeping up appearances' is encouraging people to act in very emotionally-unhealthy ways.

Blame, criticism and competition are the name of the game - and it's very hard for healthy, balanced compassion, accountability or kindness to flourish in those circumstances.

So widespread bad emotional health habits are the second reason personality disorders are on the rise. (Again, there's a lot more to say about all these reasons, and this is just an overview. We’ll explore all the areas in more detail when we move on to discussing solutions.)

Reason 3: Spleen meridian, aka 'The energy of compassion' is very weak in many people today

Here’s where it gets a little weird, but stick with me, keep an open mind, and you'll hopefully learn some amazing things.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the spleen meridian is the main 'energy of compassion' in the physical body. When the spleen meridian is weak or compromised in some way, PEOPLE DON'T HAVE THE ENERGETIC RAW MATERIAL THEY NEED IN ORDER TO FEEL COMPASSION OR EMPATHY.

In the holistic model, the body simply mirrors the emotions and the soul, and vice-versa. When people have little or no compassion and empathy, their spleen energy is very weak. When they have weak spleen energy, they'll normally have very little healthy compassion or empathy.

This can occur in one of two main ways: either they'll have no compassion for anyone, including themselves (which can develop into a full-blown personality disorder), or, they'll have plenty of compassion for everyone else, and none for themselves (these are often the people who suffer the most from people with personality disorders).

Here's what takes spleen energy out:

• Trauma - including a difficult birth, caesarean section, or difficulties latching on, as well as serious illnesses, abuse, or other traumatic circumstances like the death of a close relative.

• Toxins and pollutions - including junk food, chemicals, and medications.

• Electromagnetic smog - ie, the electromagnetic vibes coming off your laptop, i-Phone, microwave oven, fluorescent lightbulbs, and a few other dozen things in your home and office.

• Stress - particularly ongoing, chronic stress where a person is repeatedly experiencing symptoms of fight / flight or freeze.

• Negative emotions - Spleen is also the 'happy' energy in the body, so when you're feeling down or depressed, that means your spleen energy is compromised, in some way.

• Negative people - when you're routinely criticised, shamed, guilted, yelled-at, ignored or blamed, that instantly takes your Spleen energy out.

Now, let's start pulling it all together, into a composite picture.

On the soul front, people's spiritual fortitude and belief in God are at rock-bottom levels (btw, believing in God is NOT the same as being 'religious', but that's a discussion for another time). When you don't have a strong, genuine connection to God, your mind, emotions and body are already operating at sub-optimal levels, energetically and spiritually.

On the emotional front, compassion and empathy are in such short supply in the modern world that having feelings, and certainly expressing them, is increasingly considered to be a sign of mental illness.

In place of compassion, accountability and kindnesses, we have selfishness, grandstanding, and superficial relationships, where people talk the talk about unconditional love, caring and acceptance, but increasingly can't walk the walk.

On the physical, energetic front, spleen meridian is being severely compromised in a whole bunch of ways. The huge increase in chemicals and preservatives being used in our food system (up to 17,000 and counting) all takes out spleen. Pesticides take out spleen. Radio frequencies and television signals take out spleen. Facebook and internet use take out spleen. Japanese nuclear reactors going into melt-down take out spleen.

Also, the amount of stress, negative emotions and negative people we all have to contend with on a daily basis is increasing, as belief in God diminishes. If you don't believe God's going to help you pay your bills, you get stressed. If you don't believe God has a miraculous way to solve your problems, you get despairing. If you don't believe God's got a plan for you and your life, you get incredibly lonely, cynical and even nihilistic, when trouble strikes. All this stuff takes out spleen, as does regular updates about all the terrible things going on in the world (aka 'the news').

And negative people…well, so many of the negative people in our lives have personality disorders, creating a vicious cycle where they create poisonous, negative, uncaring and critical atmospheres that continue to hurt them, and disrupt their own spleen energy, as much as it disturbs, hurts and disrupts the spleen energy of the people around them.

That last thing to mention here, is that World War II, in all of its terrible glory, was the single most traumatic event ever to occur to humanity collectively, and the Jewish people in particular.

That trauma affected everyone that lived through it in a deeply profound way, that I believe has still not properly been dealt with, including many members of the Jewish Community.

Even if your ancestors weren't personally caught up in the Shoah, the last 65 years have seen huge, and hugely-traumatic resettlement of whole communities to new countries, including Eretz Yisrael, as well as at least 6 wars in Israel alone.

But trauma doesn't always have to be so dramatic:

Sirens going off is traumatic. Rockets falling is traumatic. Small children losing their lives in bizarre circumstances is traumatic. Economic turmoil and debt is traumatic. Divorce is traumatic.

As we've learned, severe trauma can sound the death-knell for the spleen energy in the body, unless it's identified, and steps are taken to reverse the damage that's been done.

The good news is, there are things we can do to tackle all of the factors contributing to the huge rise in personality disorders, and that's going to be the focus of the next few posts.

As with all matters of emotional, mental or physical health, a true solution has to work across the three levels of body, mind and soul.

Usually, I like to start from the 'top' down, the top being the spiritual root of all the problems. But with personality disorders, I'm going to reverse the normal order I do things, and start from the bottom, up, with the body.

Why?



Because the body (together with a lot of prayer) is really what holds the key to unlocking the problem of personality disorders.

Why 'Talk Therapy' Doesn't Work for Cluster 'B' Personality Disorders

As clinicians are the first to admit, 'talk therapy' just doesn't cut the mustard, when it comes to dealing with Cluster 'B' personality disorders, as a key component of change is that the person has to recognise that they're actually doing something wrong, to begin with.

That basic ingredient is missing in Cluster 'B' people. For reasons to be looked at in more detail later on, self-preservation is the highest priority for people with narcissistic, borderline, or anti-social behaviour personality disorders.

That deeply-entrenched attitude of self-preservation means that they simply can't 'hear' that they've done anything wrong; they can't see their role in causing difficulties and issues for the people around them; they can't accept that their behaviour (even the most blatantly nasty examples of it) is anything other than justified, rational, proper and correct.

You have to really experience it to believe it, but a Cluster B person simply can't recognise that they 'do wrong', according to the most basic, objective definitions of wrong-doing.  That means they can't own up to bad behaviour, apologise for it, or do the necessary work required to prevent it from happening again.

Their overwhelming focus on self-preservation simply won't let them.

In talk therapy settings, Cluster B people will either blatantly refuse to address their issues and problems, or blame them on someone, or something else. Their gift for justifying their bad behaviour borders on something almost supernatural, and again has to be experienced to really be believed.

So where does this leave us?

To put it simply, if we can't get in through the door to solve the issue of personality disorders, we have to come in through the window, and the window in question is to tackle the problem at the energetic level, in the body.

But first, we need to really understand what we're dealing with.

Spleen Meridian holds the key to tackling personality disorders

Energetically, the energy meridian that holds the key to tackling personality disorders is spleen. Here's why:

As I mentioned in the last post, Traditional Chinese Medicine, states that the spleen meridian is the main 'energy of compassion' in the physical body. When the spleen meridian is weak or compromised in some way, PEOPLE DON'T HAVE THE ENERGETIC RAW MATERIAL THEY NEED IN ORDER TO FEEL HEALTHY, BALANCED COMPASSION OR EMPATHY.

(As a point of interest, Rebbe Nachman also writes extensively about the Spleen being the home of sadness and depression, and about compassion, but that's definitely a post for another time. To sum up: everything Rabbenu writes fits in with the hypothesis I'm setting out for you in these posts.)

Physically, if you strengthen spleen AND help people to overcome their 'locked in' trauma (which I'll BH write about in a separate post), then you strengthen the person's ability to feel again, and particularly, to feel empathy and compassion for other people.

Reconnecting people to their feelings is at the heart of 'solving' personality disorders.