How to be a person of substance transcript

Here is a transcript of one of our previous teachings titled:

"How to be a person of substance"

Ken:  I’ve got enough substance around my waist.  Does that count?

Dr. Alex Loyd: (laughter)  Well that’s one kind…   Thanks Ken.  Thank you all for being here today.  We love you.  We value you more than I could ever put into words.  We are honored by your presence.

I want you to think about something as we start today.  What do people say to each other about you?  How do people personally feel about you, those who know you and are close to you?  I’m not really talking about gossip which I’m very much against.  I’m talking about truthful conversation not attacking, not criticizing necessarily.  What do you think they say?  What do you think the people closest to you think and feel and believe about you? 

Try this one on for size.  How do you feel, think and believe about yourself?  I’m going to be quiet for 30 seconds.  I’d like you to just think about that thing.  How do people think about me as a person?  People close to me, people really close to me, people not so close to me – not being critical, but how do they honestly, truly think and feel?  Think about that for the next 30 seconds.

Okay.  Thank you.  Now, for some of you that was a very uncomfortable exercise, wasn’t it?  You try hard not to think about those things, right?  Well, now let’s take it a step further.  When you are getting close to your last days on this planet, hopefully when you are 90, 100, for Tom Costello 120 and healthy, not because you have some terrible disease but it’s about time for you to go.  You’ve had a great, long, healthy life.  When that time comes for you, based on the way your life is going right now – what you’re doing and not doing, what do you think people will say and think and feel and believe even if they don’t say it, when your time here is done? 

Take about 20 seconds and picture, imagine and ponder that.

Okay.  Hopefully that wasn’t too unpleasant.  Maybe it served well in our conversation for today to help make the point that I’m trying to make.  That is do you want to be a person of substance or not?  I think you know what I mean by: a person of substance.  Many of you have heard me tell the story that I was speaking at a big conference one time.  The person who was out front speaking was someone I had been kind of a fan of and was world famous.  If I said the name right now I doubt there would be a single person who didn’t immediately know who I was talking about. 

What they said out there on the stage was just terrific and wonderful.  I was agreeing with them and all that kind of stuff.  Then they came off stage, went back to sort of a remote corner where I think they believed no one could hear them.  They got on their cell phone and just started cussing somebody out up one side and down the other.  It was vicious.  I was absolutely shocked!  It was about the wrong tile in their new kitchen remodel or something like that. 

Then, it was interesting to me, they never knew I heard that.  Later I had more opportunity to be around that person.  It struck me how unbelievably unhappy that person was and how stressed they were and nervous and fearful and angry.  I never would have had a clue about that just from their writing and their work and performances.

Even though that person is extremely wealthy, has multiple houses, all the bells and whistles and toys, that jet-set kind of life, I would not call them a person of substance.  I now know, today, that a number of people who are close to that person would say the same thing. 

When a say “a person of substance” I’m not necessarily talking about a person of money or material things.  I’m talking about a person honor, a person of integrity, a person of love and joy and peace, a person who cares, a person who tries to help others, a person you can trust with your life, a person of substance. 

We’ve all experienced that where we’ve known people or talked about people and we’ve even heard that phrase, “He (or she) is really a person of substance.  They are the real thing.  What you see is what you get.  Through and through they are true.  They are straight as an arrow.”  We’ve all heard those kinds of things. 

Think about now how would it feel to you if that’s how others felt and believed and spoke about you and it’s how you felt about yourself.  Let’s take about 15 seconds or so and ponder that.  How would that feel if that was honestly what people said about you and how you felt about yourself?  Take a few seconds and think about how that would feel.

Alright!  That one feels really good, doesn’t it?  I know because I tried this before I had you do it.  It felt really good to me, too.  When I get to the end of my days those are the kinds of things I would like for other people to think and feel and say about me.  When I used to do a lot of counseling and therapy, when I did work with older people (I’ve shared this before on this program) it used to break my heart when people would get to the end of their life and they were filled with crushing regret.  “If I only hadn’t done this...  If I had only done that my life would have gone in a completely different direction.  My relationship with my kids (or my wife or my father or mother or friend) would have been totally different.”  Now they feel like they are out of time and there’s nothing they can do about it.  It’s absolutely crushing them.

What if I could wave a magic wand to those people sitting in front of me in my counseling office and say, “I’m going to grant you a wish and you’re going to be able to go back all those years and do it differently.”  How do you think they’d feel?  Oh, man, if they really believed I could do that and if I could, which of course I can’t, it would be the happiest day of their life. They would be beside themselves.  They would be jumping up and down whooping and hollering.  “Can’t wait!  Let’s go.  I’m ready.” 

Well, please hear what we’re about to talk about today while you’ve still got that time, before you get to that place in your life. Even if you are at that place in your life I believe that what we’re going to talk about today can change that for you even though you are already there. 

I think this is one of those teachings where maybe you will thank me more later than you will now.  You know that old “Mister Transmission” commercial that used to be on TV all the time.  “You’ll pay me now or pay me later.”  This is one maybe you’ll thank me more later.

I want to make a statement to you. Please listen to this.  

All true substance cannot be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands. 

Those things that we’re talking about when we say “a person of substance” – all true substance cannot be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands.  All that can be seen or touched is not truly real.  It is an illusion of sorts, but a very powerful one. 

I’m not trying to tell you some weird, freaky thing – that the couch you’re sitting on is not really there.  That’s not where I’m going.  I know the couch is there.  I know that if you hold $10 in your hand you’ve got $10 in your hand.  What I’m saying is in the context of the “person of substance” or things in life that are of true substance, and those things of honor and integrity and love and relationship, you cannot see those things with the eyes or touch them with the hands.  They are not sensed with the physical senses.  They are sensed with spiritual senses.

I don’t mean that the person that is in front of you, because relationships are what it’s all about, is not real.  I’m saying their skin is not really real.  How they look, the color of their hair, whether they are big or little, short or tall, a few pounds overweight or skinny or just right, I’m saying that stuff, the stuff you have contact with through the five physical senses is the most unreal.  The stuff that can’t be touched with the hands, can’t be seen with the physical eyes is what is most real and most substantive in your life. 

It is those things, those unseen and un-sensed things, that are going to directly determine, when you are at the end of your days here, what people will say and think about you, not in a criticizing, gossipy way but in an honest way, and the way you will honestly feel about yourself way down deep. 

I promise you that’s true because I’ve worked with many people who were at the end of their life and had money to buy everything they wanted many times over.  I promise you that every single one of them that I have dealt with couldn’t give a flip about that money at the end.  In fact some of them hated it and wished they never had that money because it ruined their life.  Maybe you’ve seen that in some of the shows like “The curse of the lottery winners.”  For so many lottery winners their whole life implodes when they get those millions of dollars when they thought it would do the opposite.  That’s such a regular occurrence and happens so consistently that the latest special I saw was a group of lottery winners getting together to try to make sure it didn’t happen to them.  It seemed the thing that usually happens. 

What am I saying?  I’m saying that maybe some of us need a paradigm shift.  Do you value the unseen substance right this moment?  Which do you value most at this very time (1:19 central time on April 24, 2013) the unseen substance or the seen substance? 

You know how to tell?  How are you living?  Are you living like you value the seen more or like you value the unseen more?  Honor.  Integrity.  Relationship.  Love. 

That’s your choice.  It’s your choice every day, a hundred times a day.  But it’s not that simple.  If you’ve been listening to this program you know it’s not that simple.  All of us have this programming inside us, just like your computer comes with hardware and software we have hardware and software.  Our most basic hardware in light of what we’re talking about today is our stimulus-response belief system which causes us to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  Very, very often that means physical.  But we’re really supposed to outgrow that when we get to 6-8 years old unless our life is in imminent danger to say I’m not living my life on that pain-pleasure now.  I’m living it based on love and truth and honor and integrity and win-win-win-win with no loosers. 

But it’s difficult to do unless you either have what I call a transforming aha, which almost in a moment causes you to see or realize something that changes everything.  It has a positive domino effect in your heart, soul, spirit, soul, mind and body. 

Einstein said he had one of those when he had the vision of riding on a beam of light.  It was E=mc² only it took him over 15 years after that to prove the math.  He said that at the moment he had the vision he knew it was true but it took him years after that to prove the math.  And many others have had visions like that where everything changed in an instant. 

I’ve had that a time or two in my life but it doesn’t typically happen that way.  Typically we have to get on the rubber gloves and mask and get down into the garbage and clean it out.  We have to deprogram and reprogram.  We’ve got computer viruses we’ve got to get rid of and then we need some new software.  That’s where you get out the Codes and you clean house. 

You say, “I’m constantly focused on physical stuff.  I’m focused on money.  I’m focused on sex.  I’m focused on stuff that money can buy.  I’m focused on how people see me and achievement and pride-type issues.  I want to live as a person of substance.  I want to value the unseen but every time I try it I just can’t seem to do it.”  Fine.  Me too.  Get the Codes out and work on those issues.  Start in category one and rotate through all the categories.  You’re going to find most of that materialistic stuff and valuing the wrong thing in the behaviors category, the Harmful Actions category.  Find those.  Work on those.  Heal those.  Then infuse the positive with the Success Codes in that 40 day infusion process so that you can truly live valuing the unseen that is the substance of the things that we truly value most when the rubber meats the road.  That’s when catastrophe comes or at the end of our life. 

How does this phrase sound to you?  How does it feel to you?  “Go do your best.”  How does that feel about going to work today?  Go do your best in love.  How about your most important relationships.  Go meet with that person today.  Spend time with that person today and do it the best you can in love.  That feels really good to me.  Go do your best and do it in love.

I think if we went by that simple little thing – I’m going to do my best and I’m going to do it in love – we would start to build up tremendous substance in our life of the things that really matter.  If we did that with our relationships, with our career, with our job, with our health, you’re going to start feeling about yourself that you are internally a person of substance.  Other people are going to notice that.  They’re going to start feeling and thinking that about you as well. 

But being a person of substance is only possible by people of substance.  People of substance will do the things of this world that are truly substantial.  Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln – on and on.  Substantial things are done by substantial people.  The determination of whether you are a substantial person or not are the unseen things of your life, not the way you look or the pounds you carry, the house you live in, the car you drive, your bank account.  Those have nothing to do with true internal, eternal, life-long substance.

If you are not living as a person of substance it means you are doing the inconsequential.  I don’t care if you are worth $30 million or if you have a whole string of best-seller books, if you’ve invented the latest, greatest thing, if you’re the new idol on television, the star that everybody is screaming over.  If you are not doing those things as a person of substance and if you are not about doing the substantial things that are prioritizing the unseen, the eternal, then no matter how much money you make and how many headlines you’re in, you are doing the inconsequential. 

The inconsequential is what leads us to, at the end of our time here, feeling that crushing regret. 

I’ve determined I don’t want to live that way.  If God will help me I want to be a person who is about things of substance, not the inconsequential.  I would love it if you would join me. 

Thank you.