For so many years, I hated myself because I would get angry. I somehow thought that if I was REALLY a spiritual person (and by that I meant not a phony spiritual person, because I had seen a lot of those), then I would never get angry at anyone, ever. The worst part was, I would hate myself when I did get angry and I would tell myself all kinds of terrible things about myself that simply weren’t true.
Then I found the Enneagram and discovered that I’m an Eight, and I’m wired to get angry, but I’m also wired to be loving, caring, strong and compassionate. The Enneagram opened up a whole new world for me in understanding and having compassion for myself and even better, having understanding and compassion for others.
This might be some of the most valuable information you’ve ever received, so watch the video now:

The basic idea of the Enneagram is that there is Nothing Wrong with you and there’s nothing wrong with anyone else, we’re all just wired differently to behave the way that we do. This is a big one to wrap your head around and I can hear you out there saying, “No, Debra that can’t be true, this person is terrible and this person is a liar, and this guy is a jerk.”
AND I WANT TO PUT IN A BIG CAVEAT HERE AROUND THE QUESTION:
What if a person has done something, like broken the law or is abusive? Isn’t that wrong?
In our discussion that Nothing Is Wrong, I’m not advocating that we go through life without boundaries, rules or laws. I was an attorney for over 20 years, and I have a deep belief in the rule of law. People who have violated our beliefs of what is moral or ethical (murder, rape, violence, theft, etc.) are to be held accountable, and their actions are not to be condoned.
But here, I’m talking about you. You and the people who are around you – your husband, your wife, your children, your friends, the normal everyday people that you run into, the people who are in your life.
And the concept that I’m talking about is that when we drop judgment about ourselves and others, it’s amazing what happens.
As Christ said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
But that’s so hard to do when this person and that person are acting like such jerks!
This is why I love the Enneagram. Because it teaches us that we are wired to be who we are and everyone else is wired to be who they are. And it moves us into compassion, which allows you to shift how you look at yourself and others.
The Enneagram originated in the Middle East hundreds of years ago and was brought to the West by the Crusaders. Because monks kept the process alive during the Dark Ages, many Roman Catholics are aware of the Enneagram.
The Enneagram is a system for deeply understanding your basic personality…
What makes you tick?
What drives you?
What makes others tick and drives them?
It helps you to see that your quirks and patterns are just part of who you are and how you’re wired.
Here’s how it works. You take a test. It tells you which number you are – there are 9 numbers. I prefer to use the word “Style,” because people generally don’t like to be called “Numbers.”
Each Style represents a deep belief that an individual uses to help navigate their life, but these beliefs are actually lies that are holding the self back from a connection with happiness, love, and contentment. You aren’t telling yourself this lie consciously; it’s an unconscious belief that is usually buried very deeply. When you discover the lies that you are telling yourself, it’s as though the entire world opens up. When you discover the lies other people tell themselves, it brings you to a deep level of understanding and compassion for them.
When you are still operating your life based on a lie, you are operating as your unhealed self. Once you see the truth, you can move toward healing.
This information is vital because it tells you how you are wired. It helps you see that some of your quirks and patterns are a deep part of who you are and that you don’t necessarily choose them. It doesn’t mean that you don’t accept responsibility – quite the contrary. By taking total responsibility, you can take this information and use it for transformation.
In an interesting book I read about the Enneagram, the author said that there is an “initial shock” in finding out exactly who you are – and he’s exactly right. It was a shock to find out not only how I do things, but to also discover how other people do things.
And that’s another interesting part. I see all of the time how almost everyone assumes that others will react in the same way that they do to a particular situation. Nothing could be further from the truth. In a small group that we organized around the Enneagram in Sedona, we made a point to talk about particular situations and our individual reactions to them. I was stunned to discover how differently people responded. A situation that would make me incredibly angry, for example, would be absolutely no problem for someone else.
At this point, I want you to take the test. The information is here on the video for the website you go to to take the free test. I don’t want your test to be influenced by any of the things I’m about to say in talking about the different Styles.
Go here to take the test now.
If you hit a question where you’re not sure, answer it as you would have at the age of 25. If you’re younger than 25, just answer how you feel, if you’re older than 25, answer it as you would have at age 25.
Stop and take the test. It will take about 10 minutes.

Start here after you’ve taken the test.
Did you take it? If you didn’t, stop and take it because it’s really, really important.
Now you know what number, or what I will call your Style, you are.
What I’m going to do is go through each of the Styles and talk about the healed aspects and the unhealed aspects. Now – I don’t know anyone who is completely healed or completely unhealed. We kind of go back and forth at different times.
It’s also important to understand that there are no good or bad numbers. Nothing Is Wrong with any of the Numbers or Styles. It’s just the way that we’re all wired to navigate the world. Everyone is different and everyone is uniquely fascinating.
Style One – The Perfectionist
The lie they are telling themselves is, “Everything has to be perfect for me to be happy.”
It’s easy to see what a set up this is for having an unhappy life, if you are telling yourself that “Everything has to be perfect for me to be happy.”

• Unhealed Ones are: critical, controlling, anxious
• Healed Ones are: ethical, honest, high-principled, ambitious

You know if you are a perfectionist or if you have one in your life.
Style Two – The Helper
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I have to do things for people for them to love me.”

• Unhealed Twos are: passive aggressive, possessive, manipulative, irrational
• Healed Twos are: warm, loving, caring, giving, adaptable

Healed Twos are fantastic friends — they will do things for you and care for you, but if they’re unhealed, they give with a hook… they’re always expecting something back and they won’t tell you what they’re expecting back. They’re the ones who say, “If you really love me, you know what I want and I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
And the Two’s out there are sitting there going, “Well, yeah,” and the rest of us are going, “No, tell us what you want, we love you, we want to give it to you.”
Style Three – The Achiever
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I must work hard, do well, and look good to be happy.”

• Unhealed Threes are: driven, dishonest, pretentious, vain, consumed by what others think about them
• Healed Threes are: optimistic, efficient, energetic, practical

These are the people who have to have designer everything, but they are also the most social and a lot of fun, and usually very, very successful, because they’re achievers.
Style Four – The Romantic Adventurer
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I must be different and special to matter.”

• Unhealed Fours are: depressed, moody, self-absorbed, temperamental
• Healed Fours are: romantic, expressive, supportive, compassionate

Fours think they’re special and they think that nobody gets them; healed fours are very romantic and creative.
Style Five – The Investigator
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I must know everything about everything in order to be happy.”

• Unhealed Fives are: stubborn, negative, secretive, distant, arrogant about what they know
• Healed Fives are: independent, inventive, wise, perceptive

Einstein was a 5.
Style Six – The Loyalist
The lie they are telling themselves is, “By being loyal to someone or something else, I will be taken care of.”

• Unhealed Sixes are: anxious, controlling, paranoid, insecure
• Healed Sixes are: loyal, practical, responsible, self-reliant, team players

Sixes are the most anxious, I mean think about it – if you believe your happiness lies with someone else, that can put you in a state of constant anxiety. But if they’re healed they are wonderful team players; they are great employees.
Style Seven – The Enthusiast
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I must avoid pain to be happy.”                                                                                      

• Unhealed Sevens are: possessive, manic, restive, narcissistic, scattered and don’t want to look at problems
• Healed Sevens are: spontaneous, versatile, enthusiastic

Sevens are the Happiest of the Styles. One of my good friends is a 7 and she is so much fun to be around.
Style Eight – The Aggressor
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I have to fight for everything I have.”

• Unhealed Eights are: angry, aggressive, confrontational, grudge holders, think they are right about everything
• Healed Eights are: courageous, direct, self-reliant, self-confident, decisive

I’m an 8. I’ll talk more about that later.
Style Nine – The Peacemaker
The lie they are telling themselves is, “I must have peace at any price.”

• Unhealed Nines are: stubborn, obsessive, judgmental, complacent, passive-aggressive, defensive
• Healed Nines are: creative, accepting, trusting, supportive

Nines are doing everything they can to control situations so as not to disturb the peace

So that’s a lot to take in. Sit with it a little while and in the next video, I’m going to talk to you about how all this can help you and I’ll tell you all about How I Went from Being an Unhappy Eight and Stopped Fighting with Everyone.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did and if you got value from this video, please like it, share the video with your friends and subscribe to our channel.

Do you feel happy or unhappy?

The answer might actually come down to a different question —

Are you connected or disconnected?

I believe all of us come onto the planet with a divine spark, a divine connection. And then for many of us (myself included), it can get muddied up along the way as we go through life. And once that happens, it can be virtually impossible to live a really happy, contented and connected life.

Watch my video to find out about your Divine Connection and what you can do to reclaim it.

If you’ve been following along, you know that in these series of videos, I’m talking about concepts from my book, The Journey to Happy– How Embracing the Concept that Nothing is wrong can transform your life.
In my book, I talk a lot about Connection, because I believe that’s what’s causing a huge amount of problems that people have today. People feel disconnected from other people, even from their own families… they feel disconnected from the larger society… many people even feel disconnected from themselves, and I say that because so many people hate themselves or dislike themselves. 
And then there’s the disconnect that results in all the negativity it feels like we’re surrounded by all the time.
What causes that? Why do people come at things from either a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” point of view? We know from the Enneagram (which I talk about in some other videos) that some of this is about how we’re wired, but there are also things that happen to us as we go through life.
My own personal belief is that when we come onto the planet, we all come here – and I mean all of us come here – with a divine spark, a divine connection.
The Bible says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Hinduism teaches that our Souls are Godlike.
I see this Divine connection that we all have as this beautiful jewel that is perfect and strong, and cannot be destroyed.
But then stuff starts to happen.
Mud & Gunk get splattered all over until all we can feel is the mud and the gunk
until it gets buried so deeply that we don’t even realize that it’s there anymore. All we can see and feel is the mud and the gunk. We lose that connection to the Divine and that feels really awful. It’s in that disconnected state that people can do some pretty terrible things.
I don’t know if this story is true, or just a teaching that I’ve heard many times, but I love this story… A monastery in Asia had a large, beautiful statue of the Buddha made entirely of pure gold. There was a war and the monks knew that their monastery was about to be invaded. They decided that to save the statue, they would cover it over with mud and make it look like a simple ceramic statue. Many years passed and after a few generations, everyone completely forgot that the statue was made of gold. One day the statue was being moved and it was dropped. The stucco cracked. And underneath was the beautiful brilliant gold!
I especially love two things about this story. The primary thing is that the “real” Buddha, the golden one, is hidden underneath all of the gunk. Just like with you, the real (golden) you is underneath all that gunk. The other part is that it takes a cracking in the exterior coat of gunk for the real you to burst forth and be seen.
I believe the trials and tribulations we all experience are just a set up for the cracking to take place. I had to reach my lowest point before I started to crack. Alcoholics Anonymous talks about hitting “rock bottom” before addicts are willing to do something to heal their addiction. The Bible talks about God being able to more easily come through “the cracked vessel.”
If you are reading this and are in a place in your life right now where everything seems to be wrong, let me tell you that I feel your pain. That’s exactly where I was almost 20 years ago when I first came to Sedona. Every area of my life was messed up – work, marriage, money, body… I know how awful it is. I know what it feels like to not want to drag yourself out of bed to face another day.
But the truth is, sometimes that can be the most incredible place to start, being the cracked vessel, because it means you can allow your Divine Connection to get activated again.
Because – and here’s the important part – it’s always been there, it’s never gone away, it’s always been with you. It’s that beautiful jewel that is perfect and strong, and cannot be destroyed.
So how can you connect back up with it? The first part is to start believing it’s there in first place.
Can you do that? Can you take that Leap of faith?
I’m not saying you have to do a complete 180 degree turn here, but could you just try this idea on for size? Because I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of relief when you do that. Just sit with the idea that you have this Divine Connection, that it’s really there and you just to have to connect with it.
And then you’re probably going to need to do something with clearing the mud and gunk… I’ve given you a bunch of processes in these series of videos for how to start doing that with things like Discover the Patterns, Enneagram, and Meditation.
But if you have some heavy duty mud and gunk like I did, you may want to think about coming out Sedona to do a retreat, because we’ll clean that gunk out and bring you back into connection in just a matter of days.
We had a woman here a few years ago who told us, “I hate everything. I hate my husband, I hate my kids, I hate my job. I hate everything. And I’m mad at everybody.”
When we dug a little deeper, we discovered that what was really going on was that she was mad at God. She had two really wonderful, loving parents and they were both killed in a car accident when she was young. She was in the car and she was hurt, but she wasn’t killed. That, of course, completely shattered her world and it resulted in her being so angry because, of course, her thinking was, how could a loving God have done this to her? He must hate her, so okay, she hated him right back.
She also had this huge amount of grief and guilt over the fact that she lived and her parents died, and that resulted in her hating herself for having survived. So here she was, walking around all these years with all this mud and gunk, all this hate, guilt and shame. Of course her Divine Connection felt like it was completely gone.
We did a bunch of sessions with her to clear out the mud and gunk. First to help her to see that the car accident was not her fault. She of course knew that mentally, but before this, she didn’t really get it on a deep level, she didn’t really believe it.
And then we helped her to clear out all that hate, guilt and shame.
But the best part came during her Inner Journey with Breath. The breath took her into the altered state and suddenly, she was there with both her parents. She told me it reminded her of the Harry Potter book where he saw both of his parents in the mirror. She totally felt their presence and was completely filled with love from both of them. But then she said something else happened…
She was filled with this deeper knowing, this deeper love, and she said she felt what seemed to her to be the presence of God. I asked her to describe it and she said there weren’t really any words, that the best way to describe it was that she felt completely filled up with love, that this huge hole that had been there forever felt like it was filled. She was sobbing during the breath journey and she was crying when she was telling me about it because it was so incredibly beautiful.
She came out saying, “It’s so weird, I came here hating everyone, including myself and God, and I’m leaving here just full of love for everyone and everything.” She had made that connection with that Divine part of herself. That was a few years ago and it still feels very real and strong for her.
We all have that – we just have to believe it and take steps to connect with it.

I discovered Breath Journeys in 1991. It is one of the most powerful processes I have ever done and I continue to use it to this day. It is a huge part of the retreats that we do here at Sedona Soul Adventures because people have such huge awakenings when they do it.

But did you know that a psychiatrist in the United States was part of developing the connected breathing process because he was trying to replicate the incredible, spiritual experiences his patients had with LSD before it became illegal? Watch my video, I think you’ll find it fascinating.

In these series of videos, I’m talking about concepts from my book
“The Journey to Happy– How Embracing the Concept that Nothing is wrong can transform your life”…
Processes that can help you feel a lot happier right away and help you to flip the switch into a better feeling state.
In the last video, I spoke about how doing 5 minutes of deep breathing every day, and doing deep breathing throughout the day, can really make a difference in your life.
Today, I want to tell you about a very special kind of breath that has literally changed my life and changed the lives of thousands of people.
It’s a form of breath that I call Inner Journey Breath. You might find similar methods that are called Rebirthing, Connected Breath or Holotropic Breathwork, all of these are somewhat similar.
It’s a process where you do connected breathing, meaning there is no stopping between the inhale and exhale and what happens when you do this is you do not hyperventilate. Instead, if the process is done correctly, you can literally go into an altered state of consciousness. 
I first found this in 1989, but the process that I first found was called Rebirthing. These processes were pioneered and developed by Leonard Orr and Sondra Ray for Rebirthing and Stanislav Grof, who is a psychiatrist. Grof had used LSD with his clients when it was still legal and his clients had incredible, transformation experiences going into these altered states.
One of the people who used LSD in this way was Cary Grant, of all people, and he talks about how life changing it was for him. After LSD was outlawed, Grof believed there had to be a way to replicate the experience and he started studying the Vedas and other texts, and learned about the yogis in India who were able to do such incredible things with their breath. When he did this with his patients, they had absolutely remarkable experiences.
So… What happens? It’s different for everyone.
In over 25 years that I’ve been doing breathwork, I’ve experienced:

• Seeing visions
• Release of emotional pain
• Release of energetic blocks
• Release of birth trauma
• Release of physical pain
• Connection with my High Self
• Connection with my Angels & Guides
• Connection with souls who have crossed over
• Receive information on problems and situations
• Sense of peace
• Enormous gratitude
• Deep knowing that All is Well and Nothing Is Wrong

Over the past 16 years, we have developed a process here at Sedona Soul Adventures that we call Inner Journey with Breath. It’s a very important process that we do with almost everyone who comes here to do a Soul Adventure because it’s so incredibly powerful.
We have had so many people over the years who have had such incredible experiences because for many of them, it is the first time in their lives that they have truly experienced the Divine – feeling like God is truly with them and part of them, and truly experienced their own Divine nature.
We had a medical doctor here a number of years ago and her breath journey was just out of this world! She saw visions, she actually communicated with her mother who had crossed over, and then she saw and felt and truly experienced the perfection that was her. She went home and told her other doctor friends about what had happened and they all said, “They must have given you a drug, did you drink anything during the session?” And she said yes, she drank water and they said, “Yes! They must have slipped LSD into your water.” Which, of course, we did not do.
Another woman got finished with her breath journey and at the end as she was talking about her experience, she said “I felt like I levitated.” Her practitioner teased her a little and said, “Yes, you were about 3 ft off the ground,” and she said, “I knew it!” She really felt that she had levitated.
Another person when she got done, lifted up the mat she was lying on and said where is the electrical cord that made the mat vibrate so much. She was vibrating so much that she was sure that there must have been electricity making it happen.
But for me, the most wonderful occurrences are those when people really experience that highest part of themselves, and when they really experience the Divine on all levels – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Have you ever had an experience like that? There really aren’t words to describe it.
I first discovered this back in 1989 at a really low time in my life. I had recently gotten divorced, I had jumped immediately into another relationship that was disastrous, I was working way too hard… but the biggest thing I suddenly discovered was my Co-dependency. One of my good friends actually staged an intervention and I entered a 12-step Co-dependency treatment program. It was an outpatient program that was supposed to go for 4 weeks, but at the end of 4 weeks they decided I needed to do at least 6.
It helped me a lot ,but at the end of the 6 weeks I just felt terrible. They kept telling us “you will always be like this” and that was just really depressing. I decided to treat myself to a massage with a new therapist I had heard about. I went for the massage and told her what had been going on with me and it turned out she was actually a Rebirthing practitioner. I did one session with her…I went into the altered state, I experienced the Divine and my own perfection, and I can hardly describe the Joy and Love that was just suddenly gushing through me.
Back then, it was felt that you needed to do the process once per week for 10 weeks with a certified practitioner – and I did that with her. Every week my joy and happiness was just increasing exponentially.
One of the after care things I was doing from my Co-dependency treatment was to go to meetings each week of Adult Children of Alcoholics. Every week we would each go around the circle talking about how we were doing and everyone every week had the same old stories, the same struggles and the same difficulties.
After the very first breathwork, I described my experience and then the next week I talked about it again. After the third week of gushing about all the love, joy and happiness I was feeling, the person next to me said, “Well, I’m not feeling as good as DEBRA is,” and after the next week, I realized I just couldn’t go back there again. Everyone else was still stuck; none of them were interested in even trying the breathwork, they were just interested in staying stuck. Which was fine, it’s a free country, everybody gets to be just as miserable as they want.
But I had found what seemed to me to be the path to everything I was looking for and that was over 25 years ago. I still do breathwork regularly, in fact I just did it again a few weeks ago. It’s amazing to me how different it is every single time.
But the best part is that this has become a cornerstone of the work that we do here at Sedona Soul Adventures. People have such incredible experiences and then we teach them how to continue to do it at home. I love it so much when someone emails me and tells me about an amazing experience they’ve had.
Don’t start doing this on your own. A breath journey is not something that you should do on your own. It’s not like the yogic breath or the breath of fire that many people are familiar with in yoga. It’s a connected breath and one that is designed to take you into an altered state, so doing it alone when you do it for the first time, is never recommended. In fact, Dr. Grof believes no one should ever do it alone because so many people have abandonment issues that come up, that when they come out of the altered state and they’re alone, that can be traumatic.
The most important is to do the process with someone who is specially trained in doing this process. If you want to find someone in your area, try searching “Breathwork practitioner” on Google and hopefully you can find someone.
Or even better, come to Sedona and experience the Breath Journey as part of your Soul Adventures. We have so many fantastic breathwork practitioners, they will lead you on an incredible journey.


How are your New Year’s resolutions going? If you’re like 82% of Americans, you’ve already broken them, but no worries!

Watch my new video on “How to Use the 51% Rule,” because it’s all about how you don’t have to be “perfect” all the time to have a fabulous, amazing, rewarding life. Isn’t that a relief?

And I think you’ll love the simple things you can do to “stay in the 51%.” Have a listen.

Today I want to talk to you about the 51% Rule.
When I first started on my spiritual path, one of the things that I was lucky enough to figure out was what I call, the 51% Rule. Simply stated, the 51% Rule acknowledges that, with all this stuff you’re trying to do and this energy you’re trying to move, if you just stay on the path of your Journey to Happy at least 51% of the time, you’re going to have an amazing, incredible life.
You don’t have to be perfect. Sometimes you’ll be at 60%, other times at 20% – because you’re human. But, as you learn to stay in the energy of Excited Expectation a majority of the time, you’ll hit the tipping point and be over the edge.
And when that happens, you’ll have momentum on your side.
For many people, when they first start out on their spiritual path, sometimes they think, “Oh, this is going to take forever, and I’ll never be able to do all this all the time.”
And that’s right. You won’t be able to do all this all the time.
But here’s the good news. So much of all this is about taking yourself off the hook. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.
And remember, Nothing is Wrong if you aren’t perfect all the time.
If you can hold yourself in the place of feeling good at least 51% of the time, your life will start to transform dramatically. And the best part is, the percentages even out — meaning that there will be times you will be feeling at 65%, sometimes even at 85%, so even if you mainly stay in the 51-55%, you will start maintaining that vibration of wonderful, juicy, delicious joy!
The trick is to not dip back into the 49% very often. So have an arsenal of things ready to do when you start to feel yourself go into that dip. Things that kind of automatically make you feel good, or at least a little better. Things that can flip the switch into a better feeling state. That’s all it takes, just feeling a little better. Don’t expect (or demand) that you must go into total bliss and joy, just do something, ANYTHING to make yourself feel a little better.
Here are some things that work for me:

• What are you grateful for? Writing down a list of things I’m grateful for and thinking about each thing. This is actually one of the Stepping Stones I talk about my the book, keeping a Gratitude Journal.
• Pet your dog or cat. Petting my dog and feeling a huge surge of love for her always makes me feel great.
• Listen to music. Listening to certain songs that just always make me feel better. The old Johnny Nash song, “I Can See Clearly Now” does it for me every time
• Watch movies (or something else guaranteed to make you laugh). If I’m at home, there are certain movies that just crack me up and I’ll put them on and fast forward to the scenes that make me laugh out loud.
• Watch YouTube Videos. There are some videos on YouTube (usually involving babies, cats, or dogs doing something funny) that make me laugh and start to feel better.
• Meditate. Sometimes meditating (particularly a guided meditation) can make me feel great, but if I find my mind going a mile-a-minute, I stop the meditation and move onto something else (like music). If it’s not making you feel a little better right away, try something else. That’s why I recommend having an arsenal of different tactics.
• Go outside. Going outside in the sunshine and appreciating the beauty of the sun (or the stars) and how incredible and big life is, always helps me.
• Get moving. Dancing and really moving (I recommend being alone for this!). What does the bumper sticker say? Dance as if no one is watching. That really moves the energy!

What are things that work for you? Have an arsenal of things that you can use to keep you in the feel good energy most of the time.
And remember, take yourself off the hook. You don’t have to be perfect 100% of the time, you just have to get to 51% and stay there most of the time. That’s the Journey to Happy.