Count Your Blessings By Dr John F. Demartini (Book)

Count Your Blessings was my very first encounter with Dr Demartini and I nearly didn’t make it! A friend had recommended the seminar and I thought it would be good to read one of his books in preparation. As I looked at the local library, this was the only one available (probably not the best selection criteria!) so I went for it!

I had done a bit of research on Dr Demartini on the internet (including YouTube) and can’t say that I was entirely convinced. The book didn’t really help. The introduction and the first chapter were so cheesy I would have stopped reading if it wasn’t the personal recommendation. The cheesiness of the book seemed to tie in with the slick pictures of Dr Demartini I had seen on YouTube…. I didn’t really get him at all!

But as I kept reading Count Your Blessings, a few topics sparked my interest: mainly the health aspect and the experiences John draws on from when he ran a Chiropractic Practice. A basic theme of the book is that your psychology influences your state of health and your body. For instance, if you hold a grudge deep inside for years, or you are always bitter, you might develop cancer. So John’s theory is that if you dissolve your grudge (or any other emotional charge) you will heal again.

I am not sure it is that simple, but then again, many of us never know until we experience a serious health condition ourselves. Only recently I read an interesting article about a medical practitioner who is a pioneer in the area of evidence-based medicine. When she developed an aggressive, terminal cancer, she turned mainly to alternative medicines (including Yoga, meditation, certain nutritional concepts) and is still alive, a year after her initial diagnosis (she writes a blog for a medical journal). But I definitely believe that we can be healthier when we are grateful, don’t hold any grudges and see all facets of the situation we are in.

As in all of his books, at the end of every chapter, John includes Affirmations and certain exercises for the reader to complete. Most of these exercises focus on gratitude, and as the title suggests, counting our blessings. The underlying theme is, the more we are grateful for, the more we receive to be grateful for. The Attitude is Gratitude!

Of course I completed the exercises (more or less involved) and at the time I had pulled a muscle in my leg. I had been to the physiotherapist numerous times without any improvement. One of the exercises required the reader to focus on the positive aspects of their illness / problem.

If you have ever completed any of Demartini’s exercises (such as the Collapse Process), you know that it’s not as easy as it sounds. You are often asked to come up with reasons or justifications and that doesn’t mean just two or three. The minimum requirement is normally 20-50 reasons (if not more)! The reasoning behind this is so the reasons are not only logical, but become emotional as well. You feel gratitude, rather than think gratitude. And I am convinced that this method (feeling rather than thinking) makes a difference!

So I completed this exercise and afterwards I kind of forgot about it. But after a few days I noticed that the pain my leg was entirely gone! I couldn’t pinpoint when, where or how it happened, whether it had anything to do with Demartini’s exercise or the physio, all I knew was that it was gone! I know this is a measly example, especially compared to Demartini’s claims that he has cured cancer patients with this method.. But experiencing something first hand, not matter how small, makes a totally different impact! And it definitely led me to finishing the book.

You can check out Count Your Blessings at Amazon.

Secrets to Financial Success by Dr John F Demartini (Audio Set)

Just like John’s other Audio Sets (especially The Art of Communicating), I enjoy listening to this one. If you have read How to make One hell of a Profit and still get to Heaven you will find this CD set is repeating most of the concept. I enjoy listening to it though and by hearing some of the concepts repeatedly, they are easier to understand.

This CD set is quite long (8 CDs) and it is a recorded version of John’s Secrets to Financial Success Seminar. It addresses both personal finances and finances for businesses and many of the concepts for these areas are similar and grounded in the same ideas. I focused more on the personal finance ideas as this is more applicable in my life at the moment.

Similarly to the book, the basic concept of this Audio Set is to progress your financial literacy and investments by starting with the basics, such as a high interest savings account and progress from there. The slogan is “Earn the right to risk”!

• High interest savings account (Saving)
• Term deposit (Saving)
• Government Bonds (Investing)
• Blue Chip Shares / Established Real Estate (Investing)
• Other shares / Other Real Estate (Investing)
• Initial Public Offerings / Speculative Real Estate (Speculating)
• Equity Funding (Speculating)

This system is based on the fact that we can digest a fluctuation of up to 10 percent in our financial portfolio without any psychological stress. Anything more would cause severe stress and psychological instability.

So the trade-off of having smaller returns in a high interest saving account than in a share portfolio is the security of knowing the money in our savings account is safe whatever happens to the stock or property markets.

Considering the downturn in the economy at moment, and the fact that many younger generations haven’t really experienced a downturn of the economy before, this concept seems like a good idea. Although it can be hard, to watch others make incredible returns during good times, the idea is that the slow and steady will win the race.

I like the practical advice John gives to encourage us to start saving:

As per the 10 percent fluctuation rule, he recommends to either save 10 percent or a nominated amount each pay period (which ever is greater). Every three months, we should increase this amount by 10 percent. If we started at $100 per week, we would increase this to $110 after three months and $121 after six months.

If we ever find ourselves with some spare cash, this can of course also go into the savings account. But remember, the savings account is not to be touched for anything but saving or investing! Once we have managed to save our first cushion (about 60-90 days, or three months worth of wages), we start to save the same amount (60-90 days or three months) for the next category on the list (see above).We can use the time it takes us to save the next amount to learn about the new investment category and therefore “Earn the right to risk”.

John also has some tricks up his sleeves to motivate us to keep saving: For example future projections on how much money we will have in one years time, two years time, five years time, etc. To do this we calculate our current savings amount, consider the 10 percent increase every three months and the reinvestment of the interest. This will slowly lead to exponential growth of our savings! Eventually, we will have saved enough money that we can live of the interest alone!
The time this takes is of course dependent on the amount of money we save each week. But no matter how long it takes, I find it very motivating and inspiring that a slow and steady approach can have returns that will eventually make us financially independent.

I took the advice to heart and have opened an additional savings account. There are heaps of internet based savings accounts that pay great interest rates and don’t charge any fees. Now I have one transaction account, one savings-then-spending account and one savings-then-investing account! My Savings-then-investing account gets fed automatically every fortnight! Now I only need to do those calculations to see how long it will take me to become financially independent…

The Art of Communicating by Dr John F. Demartini (Audio Set)

John’s tapes are some of my favourites to listen to. He is very funny at times and I have definitely had a few looks on the bus when I was laughing out loud!
The Art of Communicating is a fairly short CD and centres around communication (surprise!), values and relationships. The basic message is, that we all live according to our own value systems which can be vastly different from one another.

We perceive the world according to our values and the priorities in our lives. Think of the classic example: How do a businessman and a mother perceive the same situation? For instance a childcare centre may be perceived by a mother as a haven for her children to play and learn, while the businessman may see how the centre is not earning enough money and not operating properly as a business.

We can’t expect others to change their value system. So the key is to find out about their value system and to communicate in it. Your boss may only be interested in meeting the budget, but if you show him/her how an excursion will increase motivation and productivity and promote team work, they might just re-evaluate your proposal.

One of the most interesting points that John raises is that many people have no idea what their value system actually looks like! So he proposes a basic formula to find out what your REAL priorities are in life (and not what you pretend they are). Ask yourself the following questions:

•How do you spend your time?
•How do you fill your space?
•How do you spend your energy?
•How do you spend your money?
•What do you think about?
•What do you visualise? What do you see for yourself, what is your dream?
•What do you talk about (to yourself and others)?
•What do you react to?

You can write down a few answers (say three) for each question and see which one occur repeatedly. The one you have named most often, will be your highest value. You may just surprise yourself!

John also makes an interesting point about ‘Should-ing’. Whenever we think ‘I should do this’ or ‘I should do that’ we are imposing someone else’s value system on ourselves. Clearly, if we think we should go to the gym, but we’d much rather stay at home and read a book, we value reading a book more but are imposing on ourselves the idea that going to the gym is more important. Similarly, if we spend our monthly wage on a handbag and think ‘I really should be saving this money’, we clearly value the handbag more but are thinking about our parents who are telling us to save our money to invest.

Recognising this can be really powerful: every time I now think ‘I should’ I start to analyse whether I really want to do something. Do I just think I need to do this because everyone else is doing this? Or is it actually helping me to go where I want to go? If it is helping me and I can see the connection to my value system, it suddenly changes from ‘I should do this’ to ‘I want to do this because it helps me achieve X’. If it is really just a ‘should’, then I won’t even bother doing them!

All in all I find this CD is definitely worth listening to! It’s so short you can listen to it in one go and in fact I often re-listen to this one. Whether it is the whole thing or just bits and pieces that I particularly like, this CD is a good reminder of how we communicate and interact with people and definitely helps to increase self-awareness!

The Breakthrough Experience with Dr John F. Demartini (Seminar)

Apparently John Demartini came to mainstream fame because he was one of the people interviewed in the film The Secret. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t actually seen The Secret and from what I can gather I wouldn’t really like it.

So, how did I happen to go to his seminar? On the recommendation of a trusted friend, I decided to take a leap of faith and attend the seminar.

I met all sorts of people at this seminar, an Art teacher, who went to the introductory session and just ‘had to learn more’, a Melbourne couple who flew to Sydney to attend the seminar as they couldn’t make the Melbourne session, and a lot of repeaters who had attended the same seminar previously but wanted to attend again, including a lady who had been to the seminar in Auckland, NZ the previous weekend but couldn’t get enough.

These seemed very high credentials for a seminar that only goes over two days. Initially I thought “Didn’t they pay attention the first time around? Why do they have to come again?” But this is the difference with The Breakthrough Experience. Some seminars advertise that you never have to come back, once you have been. With this one you could do 20 seminars and still learn more each time!

Let me explain:

The first half day we learnt the basics. John’s main concept that the whole world exists in equilibrium: for every good there is a bad, for every nice there is evil, for every white there is a black. The basis of this concept is quantum physics in which there is a positive for every negative. This theoretical stage of the seminar is intellectually challenging and, funnily enough, I enjoyed it while half of the complex, theoretical talk went straight over my head. I was kind of wondering what I had got myself into!

But the backbone of the seminar is the afternoon / evening of the first day. We completed the collapse process with John’s Demartini Method. The idea behind this process is to collapse the emotional associations you have with certain persons or events. This could either be an extreme positive association, like infatuation, or a negative association, like resentment. The idea is, that after finishing the process, one would let go of any emotional charge, thus returning the person or event back to their natural equilibrium.

We started the process at around 2pm with about 130 people in the room. There was no talking, everyone was concentrating intently on their collapse and qualified facilitators walked around, helping anyone who got stuck by themselves. You only hear whispers and the occasional weep, people are crying with joy, fear, relief.

But let me tell you, this is difficult and some people were so resistant that they left and did not return to the seminar at all!

About three to four hours into the collapse process, I had hit a few walls, was ready to give up because I thought it was silly, being lightly prodded by the facilitators if they saw me drifting of in my thoughts. And then I had a really exciting and illuminating moment: we attract in others what we suppress in ourselves.

The theory is based on the fact, that we all have all character traits. Due to circumstances, societal influences, or personal decisions, we may decide that we do not like a certain trait, we despise it. This is our ‘disowned’ part: although we still possess this trait, we suppress it. But since everything exists in equilibrium, we attract our disowned parts from our environment: our spouse, children, brother, sister, boss, work colleague.


Through the collapse process you accept that you own this trait just as much as the next person, it won’t bother you anymore. You won’t despise it anymore. By the way, this also works the other way around, you can collapse a trait you admire in others, but you think you lack. Through the collapse process you can see that you also own this trait that you admire. This can be extremely powerful and the John actually recommends to collapse everyone you admire, such as mentors and idols, so you can realise that you have the same traits.

Underlying questions during the collapse process are “What would it be like if the person / event were the exact opposite?” and “What would the world be like if the person /event was how I wish they were?” By answering these questions, we can recognise more than ever that things happen for a reason, that whatever happened in the past, has made us who we are today, and that we should be grateful for that.

Ideally the collapse process results in letting go of emotional charges and seeing the person or event in its natural state, with pure love and gratitude rather than prejudices and preconceptions imposed by society. As a result people reported relief, better sleep and even improved physical condition such as less chronic pain.

Most people, especially the first-timers like me needed a lot of encouragement from the facilitators to get through. Some people gave up and left the seminar altogether, some may have pretended to conclude the process, but the majority of people were in tears of gratitude and joy by the end of the night, after an exhausting 10 hours of letting go of emotional charges.

The second day of the seminar builds on the collapse process from the previous night and John explains how to use the method to deal with grief and loss. The afternoon concludes with a future projection of goals and purposes, and where we want our life to be. Due to the time pressures, I didn’t find this as useful and beneficial as the colapse process. But then again, there is only so much you can squeeze into two days. Which is why at the end of the seminar, the company organising these seminars, Global 1 Training, delivers the typical sales presentation of ‘advanced courses’ that are available.

I haven’t signed up for any additional courses, the cost being a major prohibiting factor, but can definitely say that thoroughly enjoyed everything I learnt at this seminar.

One of the major advantages is the ability to take away the Demartini Method, or collapse process and being able to do them over and over again. With promises that the process becomes easier when often practiced, John recommends doing one collapse process a week. I have to admit, I haven’t kept up the collapsing, it would take a lot of patience, motivation, determination and time. Which is exactly why you see so many people return to this seminar!