An excerpt from Dave’s Amazon #1 Bestseller: The Imperative Habit: 7 Non-Spiritual Practices Towards Spiritual Behaviour – For Happiness, Health, Love and Success...

One of the things I noticed in many of the books that I read was the lack of a prescribed “practice” or steps to follow to instill into our life the excellent teaching the books espoused. My purpose for mentioning this is not to take anything away from the wonderful books that I’ve read that changed my life, but in my pursuit to change my life, and being an engineer type, I needed more. I needed more than the concept or idea that the books I read graciously provided. I needed a step-by-step “practice” that when practiced would make the lesson, idea, or concept “stick.” I was unable to find a mechanism to do that: to have the lesson stick and become habit. So, I created the Imperative Habit for myself. I used it. I still do today.

I created the Imperative Habit from the best parts of the best books, from the greatest minds of people actively researching and teaching wellness, fulfillment, transformation, and life change. The Imperative Habit is a synthesis of their awesome ideas and concepts with the addition of my creating step-by-step processes to instill these fabulous ideas and concepts as habits in my life. To make them stick.

I should tell you too that I read these books many times. Not one time. Not two times. I’m talking, four, six, eight times. A lot of times. Why did I read all these books and why so many times? I read them so many times BECAUSE I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND THEM! I was a caterpillar reading butterfly, and it was as much Greek as Latin to me. I was endlessly awestruck with the power of the text but let down by my own lack of comprehension. So, I read them over and over again. Building context to create comprehension and eventually application.

As I said, I was so low, I would have put tomato juice in my hair, which became my motivation to read each sentence over and over until I not only understood what it said, but also understood HOW IT APPLIED TO ME. And here lies a big tip:

Everyone is at a different stage of transformation. This means that everyone will comprehend things differently. Because of this, I urge you to always ask yourself about what you read in this book and beyond, “How does this apply to me and my life?”

Do not underestimate the power of STOPPING and asking yourself how lessons apply to your life, lessons I share in this book as well as in other situations you encounter. This is a key point and practice to best apply a lesson to your own life.

Even if you do not think aspects of my book and habits apply to you, likely they do and you just don’t see it (this goes back to living in the dark room but not realizing; to context). So, think about it! Think how. Consider any alterations in my story that you can make so that your story, your life, and the place you are at, you can apply these lessons to. As these are lessons in life from amazing teachers, it is up to us to see how they apply to us. As we evolve, the lessons will evolve too.

As much as I loved what Eckert Tolle taught, I had to understand it first and only THEN could I endeavor to believe what he taught until finally I believed what he taught. His book, as well as other books and authors, resonated so deeply with me that I needed to know how to apply them to my life. Once I was able to institute them into the fabric of my own psyche and life, things changed. Thus, the reason why I read these books so many times. No one told me the phrase or practice I have come to coin—“Believe it until you believe it”—but I needed it. I needed to embody the lessons of these authors for real change to catalyze within me and my life. As I say, to make real change we need to, well, … change.

We practice believing to reprogram our subconscious mind such that it too believes what we are telling it. To practice this, we need to “believe it” or accept it, and then “believe it until we believe it.” We need to accept, believe, and practice (that’s the first “believe it”) until our subconscious mind “believes it” too. It is akin to learning how to kick a soccer ball with the opposite foot. We need to “want” to believe changing kicking feet is good for us and use that “belief” to practice and practice and practice until the foot change takes hold and occurs automatically. That’s when our body will accept and believe it on its own.

I had to collect different points of view and different perspectives to see if the perspectives I learned were real or way out of left field. I was driven to change my life and put the pieces together. Even though ideas resonated with me, I did doubt them. They hadn’t sunk in yet. It was natural to doubt. There were many nights I sat confused, wondering what was what and if what these authors and teachers taught me was real, if it could be trusted and how far to take it. I even do this sometimes today. And yet, they still hold water.

This book, The Imperative Habit—7 Non-Spiritual Practices Towards Spiritual Behavior, is a collection of what I learned, trusted, and implemented in my life via the process of doubt. My life then became about acceptance, understanding, embodiment, practice, and implementation of these teachings into my life.

It is called “non-spiritual,” as I talk very little about spirituality in this book, yet the lessons and practices I present are what I call “spiritual behavior.” What is that? The answer itself may be a book in its own right. However, in the simplest form, to me, it is behavior that incorporates non-physical aspects of our makeup such that amazing, powerful choices can be made. To me, and for this book, spiritual behavior is:

Having the power to use the non-physical aspects of ourselves—spirit, soul, essences, whatever you call it—to make tough choices beyond our evolutionary biology, as needed to accomplish our highest purpose.

Everything I offer, I have put myself through. I still do. I have lived this life. I lived the pain and fallout of my mistakes. I have questioned and experienced confusion, applying and seeing how far to take certain lessons. Many times, I have felt uneasy with walking day to day on uncharted territories, of not knowing who I was, or what I was doing. And yet all of it was cathartic and needed as part of the process.

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