Wouldn’t it be great if we could get immediate feedback about when the mind shuts itself off and we go unconscious to ourselves and our communications with others? Wouldn’t that save a lot of grief and potential problems if we could say to ourselves, “Hey wait a minute, I’m beginning to drop off now. I’ll wake up when there’s a version of reality playing that I can relate to.”? Wouldn’t it be useful to be have a built-in unconsciousness meter somewhere in our brains that would alert us to when we go unconscious and when others do the same?

It is no secret that the quality of consumer merchandise has dropped significantly in recent decades. Products made today are not designed to last more than a season or two and are nearly always cheaper to replace than to repair.

We all have unlimited potential. We keep most of it locked away in a vast, mysterious area of the psyche called the “Shadow.” The Shadow is the birthplace of brilliance, the crucible of creativity.

Paradoxically, it is also the domain of our most destructive impulses.

Fictional characters like serial killer Hannibal Lecter become popular icons because at some level we recognize them as manifestations of dark desires we keep locked away in the dungeon of our Shadow. But Mozart, Shakespeare and Mother Theresa are imprisoned in this very same dungeon.

Dualism does not exist in the Shadow realm. There is no distinction between potential for “good” and potential for “evil” – it’s all the same. That’s what makes the Shadow such a frightening and dangerous place.

The core lesson in this chapter is based on one you learned as a child: “If you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody, don’t say anything at all.” We only have to modify this adage a little so that “somebody” includes yourself and the situations in which you find yourself.

The idea is, very simply, to reach for a positive feeling before you speak, whether it’s in your head or out loud. If you can learn to do this one thing, you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel and, consequently, how much your relationships and your life will improve as well.