Stop Feeding the Pendulum | Reality Transurfing

You leave a meeting with three good ideas and one sharp comment.

Which one comes home with you?

If you’re anything like me, it’s the comment. You hear it again while you’re making dinner. By the time you’re washing the dishes, you’ve come up with the perfect reply. You may even have a whole closing argument ready for a trial nobody scheduled.

That’s what I call a pendulum prod. Something gets your attention, and before you know it, you’re giving it the rest of your evening.

In Reality Transurfing, Vadim Zeland puts it this way.

“Dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment are the pendulum’s favorite dish.”

So what do you do when you realize you’re serving dinner?

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What is a pendulum in Reality Transurfing?

In Zeland’s framework, a pendulum is a thought structure that gains energy from the attention people give it. Picture a group chat that lights up every time somebody brings up the same old complaint. Someone adds a screenshot. Someone else says, “See? I told you.” Now five people are spending their lunch breaks on the same argument.

A prod is the moment that pulls you in. It can be a look, a text, or even a memory that pops up while you’re folding laundry. Sometimes you feel it in your body first. Your jaw tightens. Your shoulders rise. Your thumb is halfway to Send.

Dissatisfaction can tell you something needs your attention. I get curious when I’ve gone over the same moment five times and still haven’t decided what to do about it. That’s usually when I ask myself where my attention has gone.

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The pause puts the whole pizza back on the table

Years of watching human patterns under pressure have taught me to start with three simple steps. Pause. Awareness. Choice.

I pause long enough to ask, Where am I dissatisfied? Where do I feel unfulfilled? The answer can be simple. I felt brushed off when I brought up my idea.

Now I can see where my attention went.

Think of your attention as landing on one slice of a pizza. That slice is the sharp comment. It’s real. And there’s a whole pizza on the table. Maybe one person asked how your idea would work. Maybe the group ran out of time before you could finish. Maybe you want to speak to the person who made the comment and ask what they meant.

My pause might last one breath. In that breath, I can notice the difference between what I heard and what I’m filling in. “We need to talk about the cost” is what I heard. “They think I have no idea what I’m doing” is what I added.

Now I have a choice. I might ask, “Which part of the cost worries you most?” That one question can turn an afternoon of guessing into a conversation I can do something with.

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What a golfer taught me about the wish fulfilled

I asked a golfer I was coaching how he got ready for a round. He told me he got his stuff together, got out the door, and went to the course.

I said, “Well, let’s try something different. Let’s prepare with your mind.”

I wanted him to picture how he’d like to play. Feel the club in his hands. See himself pick a target and go through his routine. Picture what he’d do if the ball landed in the rough. Can he walk up to it, take a breath, and play the shot he has?

That’s how I use Neville Goddard’s idea of living from the wish fulfilled, which I talk about in the episode alongside his book Feeling Is the Secret. Imagine the result you want and get familiar with how it feels. If your wish is to feel steady on the course, imagine yourself playing with that steadiness. Give yourself a scene you can picture and a feeling you can recognize.

Say holes three and four go sideways. You’re walking to the next tee, and your mind wants to play both holes again. That’s your chance to practice. Feel your feet on the ground. Pick your target. Ask what the steady version of you would do with this shot.

There’s still golf left to play.

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When I kept looking for rejection

I tried this in a relationship where I’d felt distance for a long time. I remember feeling like I could be sitting right there and still go unnoticed. Once I saw that rejection was the slice I kept looking at, I began to notice how much of the day I spent waiting for another sign of it.

So I tried a different scene in my imagination. I pictured a kind exchange. I imagined what it would feel like to hear warmth in the other person’s voice and respond with warmth of my own. I also practiced what Goddard calls revision. When I found myself replaying a tense exchange, I imagined how I would have liked to show up in it.

As I practiced, I noticed moments of kindness that surprised me. I had been so focused on the distance that those moments felt like a real change. When I catch myself back in the courtroom now, I can ask what would help in that moment. Do I want a calm conversation? Do I need a little space?

Goddard used the phrase bridge of incidents for the events that unfold on the way to an imagined outcome. I like to leave some room for that part. I can picture how I want to show up and still let God surprise me with how the day unfolds.

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Give the pendulum a reason to lose its grip

Sometimes I catch myself rehearsing that closing argument again. I’ve got the evidence. I’ve got the witnesses. In my head, I’m about to win a case over a three-word text.

This is where I use laughter. I might picture myself giving that grand speech in a pair of pigtails and giant clown shoes. It’s hard to take my closing argument quite as seriously when I can hear those shoes squeak.

The humor is for me. It buys me a second to set the phone down and decide whether I want to talk, take a walk, or let a small thing stay small.

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Try it the next time pressure hits

Start with a moment you already know. Maybe you missed a Tuesday workout. By Thursday you’re telling yourself you’ve lost your rhythm. Pause and name the slice. I’m looking at the workout I missed. Then look at the day you actually have. Could you take a ten-minute walk after lunch? Could you do a few sets before dinner?

At work, you might pause before you answer a message that feels sharp. In a relationship, you might hear the closing argument start and ask yourself what you’d say if you wanted to be understood. On the golf course, you might simply look down the fairway and pick your next target.

This week, pay attention to the little moment when your mind says, Well, there goes the whole day. What slice has your attention? What else is on the table? What would the steady version of you do next?

I explore this practice on The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast. If someone came to mind while you were reading, share the episode with them.

Start a Conversation if there’s a pressure situation you’d like to see more clearly.

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Read More Articles from Kathie

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Transcript

 Today we're gonna talk about pendulums, and I want you to think about something real quick before we even get into the episode. Think about dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment. And here's why. In the book Reality Transurfing, Vadim Zeland says, and I quote, "Dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment are the pendulum's favorite dish." Today we're gonna talk about how to unhook from the pendulum prod and how to use your imagination like Neville Goddard teaches, and how to really stop the pendulum prod. This is one of my expertises in human patterns under pressure, and I cannot wait to talk about it. So if dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment are a pendulum's favorite dish, how do we stop that? I love this question, and I love observing human patterns under pressure. And dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment are things that people talk about all the time, and it's easy to do because think about this for a minute. We have the negativity bias. It wants our attention. And I have been studying this for years. A pendulum is simply a thought structure that only wants your energy, and the best way to describe it is using its favorite dishes: dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment. And anytime you feel either one of those, I believe you are falling into losing your peace, your power, and your presence. So how do we get this back? We pause. The second that the pressure hits, we pause because inside the pause we activate awareness, and awareness is just God, the universe, infinite intelligence, whatever you decide to call it. Awareness creates choice when we pause, when pressure hits. And I like to insert the question: where am I dissatisfied and where am I lack of fulfilled? I have been using this for the last three to four weeks in my own life. I have seen dramatic changes that I couldn't have even imagined in my wildest dreams, and this is where Neville Goddard's work comes in. I have been working on imagining the wish fulfilled like Neville Goddard teaches. When we go to that imagination of what we want, which is not dissatisfaction and it's not lack of fulfillment, it's the exact opposite. When we can get into that state, we actually can observe what is happening in our lives, and we can observe it from a more peaceful place, a more powerful place, and a more present place. This is something that I speak about on stages, that I speak about in workplaces, that I speak about with my clients who are trying to get better at their game or their work or their business. So dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment, when we focus on those two things, I believe we are focusing on what the devil or the pendulum wants us to pay attention to. And the pendulum will prod you. Resist that temptation to be prodded. And you can feel that lack of fulfillment or that dissatisfaction just in conversation with other people. This is something I am trained to identify in human patterns under pressure. Because when pressure hits, we want to go to the negative. It's just easier to do, and it also makes us feel like I'm right, and that is the ego. The ego loves to be right. It loves to edge God out. But this is where I insert the pause, and the pause helps you go, "Hold on a second. I see the lack of fulfillment. I see the dissatisfaction." That is where I'm putting my awareness. Where your awareness goes, your energy flows. Where your attention goes, your energy flows, and that is what the pendulum wants. So the very first thing inside that pause is I go, "Okay, I got awareness," and then awareness creates choice. The best way I can describe this is a pizza. Your awareness is on one slice of a whole pizza when you are dissatisfied or lack of fulfilled. Awareness is going to pay attention to what you're asking it to pay attention to. But infinite intelligence can look at all of those pieces of pizza in one pizza, and in fact, I invite you to look at it as stacked on top of each other in the now moment. You have infinite slices of pizza that you could pay attention to, and instead, the pendulum has prodded you, so you're now dissatisfied, and you're lack of fulfilled. Let's see where in this now moment we could pay attention to that piece of pizza that is actually where we want to go. I like to tie this to Neville Goddard's The Feeling is the Secret. So we want to picture what we want in mind. I was working with a client the other day who is a golfer, and I asked him, I said, "How do you prepare before you go to the course?" And he said, "Oh, I just put my stuff together and get out the door and go on over there." And I said, "Well, let's try something different. Let's prepare with your mind." What I was doing with him was I was helping him to look at another piece of pizza, put his attention there. The best golfers ever do this in their mind. They play the game in their mind before they get there. And by doing that, they're already preparing their muscles, their body, their-- how they're gonna act, how they're gonna react, and they are ready to go. They are focused on that piece of pizza that is the state that will not be affected by dissatisfaction or lack of fulfillment, especially if you can train your mind to stay focused on that piece of pizza. And let God, the universe, or infinite intelligence surprise you because what looks like dissatisfaction in the moment, what looks like lack of fulfillment in the moment, is actually part of the journey to the end result. It's actually a bridge of incidents. I actually started practicing this very deeply in a relationship that I have right now. And in this side, this relationship, it has been distant for a long period of time. And I invite each of you to look at this because it happens to all of us. Inside these relationships, I felt distant. I felt like I was s- not even noticed, and I felt dissatisfied, and I felt a lack of fulfillment, and I'm like, "Wait a second, this is not okay." My attention was focused on the rejection. Let's just put that there. That was the lack of fulfillment. And instead, I started focusing my attention on the other person being kind, being in a good mood. I was also revising situations that had happened in the past. And in this now moment, things just appeared differently. As one of my mentors likes to say, he says, "It appears to disappear," and I agree. It did appear to disappear. The other person appeared to transform right before my eyes. I was interrupting the pendulum. And here's two ways you can interrupt the pendulum. First of all, you observe it, and I kind of already alluded to this. You watch what the pendulum is doing. I see you're trying to get my attention, and I'm going to take that attention to the piece of pizza I want. Sometimes it's not that easy. Sometimes it's better to stop the pendulum with laughter. Laughter is one of the best emotions to hand to a pendulum. It hates to be laughed at. Think about it for a second. Mm, a pendulum just prodded you, and if you can laugh at it and see the humor in the situation, does this really matter in the big picture? Perhaps that's a great way to laugh at it. But what I do is, in my imagination, I can picture that person in a funny situation with pigtails in their hair, with them wearing funny clothes, perhaps even looking like a clown. And in my imagination, I start laughing at it. So you can't even bother me because I'm, I'm laughing at you. You think you're funny." And when you do that, it stops the pendulum. And, and Vadim Zeland says this in Reality Transurfing, that one of the best ways to stop a pendulum is to laugh at it, and I invite you to try it. And, and here's something else Vadim says in the book. He goes, "Don't take my word for it. You try it." He says that often on all of his methods, and he's correct. He's correct. Another thing that has happened inside my imagination I picture what I want and I live from the end, and this is something I also coach and consult on. So take that golfer. I was telling him, I said, "Picture how you want the whole game to go. Go play it in your mind and play it over and over and over again in your mind." This is what professional athletes do. They perform it in their mind before they get there And also leave room for God, the universe, infinite intelligence to surprise you. When you do that, you leave room for uncertainty. And when uncertainty hits, there, there could be a, a chance or an opportunity for you to practice this. Because let's say you are a golfer, and you did practice in your mind, and you didn't do well on holes number three and four, and you still have nine more holes to go. Well readjust, get centered, and think, "This is going to help me in my game." And use your imagination to picture that and regroup And who knows? You practice the wish fulfilled and things start changing right before your eyes. Things appear to disappear. People start acting different towards you. Bridge of incidents open up that you would have never expected if you were caught in the dissatisfaction and the lack of fulfillment. When you are caught in those by the pendulum hook, you cannot see the surprises that await for you, the bridge of incidents, the synchronicities, the coincidences. And when you laugh and you get unhooked by the pendulum's prod, you find that things appear to disappear or things appear to be better than you even expected because you put your awareness on the infinite stack of pizzas instead of that one dissatisfied lack of fulfillment So I invite you to try something this week. The next time pressure hits, you pause, you have awareness, and awareness creates choice. Name the slice of pizza that you happen to be looking at, and look at what else is on the table. Ask what the steady version of you would do next. At work, look at the whole meeting before you decide how to follow up on one sharp remark. In a relationship, catch the closing argument, the courtroom, and decide whether you want a calm conversation or a little space. In your fitness and wellness, notice what one missed workout starts to feel like, proof you've lost your rhythm, and ask what movement fits your day today. In your game, same situation. That's a natural place to name the awareness. So I invite you, what slice has had your whole attention lately? All right, that's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful, and if you know somebody who could benefit from this, please share it with them. And until next time, I'll see you next time on the Kathie Owen Perspective podcast.