Righty-Oh!

Righty-Oh!

Back in the day I felt pretty inconsequential. Invisible in certain circumstances, even. I mentioned that to some friends at lunch one day, that I could go invisible. They naturally pooh-poohed the idea, so invisible I went. I stayed that way for about 20 minutes and the look on their faces when I “reappeared” was priceless. It was a skill I learned to avoid abuse. I have met a number of people who know how to do this. It’s usually a response to abuse. I don’t know if I can still do it.

For many years, and a lot of bad stuff, I felt wrong. On some level, I believed that my adults were right and that abusing me was their privilege. I had to learn to roll with it, so to speak. I learned to forget and forget I forgot. I learned to disassociate, and, depending on how bad it was, I could get out of my body several layers. I believed that everyone lived in fear like me. And I believed that I was fundamentally bad and wrong.

Why am I right? What makes me trust my instincts?  How do I know I am good?

I felt perpetually guilty, ashamed, terrified, helpless, and, oddly, put upon. I was mostly really depressed and spent a lot of time wishing that I had never been born.

As I chose to grow up, I started to lose that sense of being bad and wrong. I began to find a feeling of being right deep inside, and with it, I started to understand consequences.

My poor adults didn’t understand that they had choices. They were ensconced in misery, feeling desperate and helpless and took it out on those who were weaker. Poor little adults.

The more I worked through my feelings of resentment and fear, of rage and guilt and shame, the more compassion I found for my abusive adults. And the less I felt abused. The more I cleaned out my toxic feelings and thoughts, the easier it was to forgive. I began to understand that “victim” was a choice.

I began to see that I made a difference in the world just by being. I began to understand that my words were heard, my actions seen, my energy responded to by all sorts of people. I could see that I had an impact and I started to experience some wonderful consequences.

I began to understand that I was not bad and wrong, I was right. I could see that while my poor abusive adults seemed to think that they were right, many of them also felt bad and wrong. It’s so challenging to make changes when we feel like we are bad people who make bad decisions. This is a good time to get outside help.

When I feel right I feel peaceful and relaxed. I feel open to new ideas and open to the diversity of our opinions. I am clear on the notion that neither you nor I are our behavior. I can model for you ways of behaving that yield better consequences. By telling my story, what it was like, and how I changed it, I can often inspire you to try new ways to think, new beliefs that are supportive of the lives we want to live. In other words, I don’t need to proselytize or lecture or try to pound my ideas into you. I can, instead, create a safe space for you to find your way, as I have found mine. When I feel right, I can understand that what works for me may not work for you, and trust that you will choose to take care of yourself in your best ways. I can choose to believe in the power of your good heart.

How have I changed from living in negative consequences to enjoying the positive consequences of feeling right?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 05232015

From Shame to Freedom

From Shame to Freedom

Feeling like we are wrong is a rough place to be in. It eats up our confidence, it makes us second guess ourselves. I, for one, end up feeling kind of powerless when I feel wrong.

Why am I right? How am I powerful? What makes me confident?

There is a huge difference between feeling wrong and owning our mistakes.

When I own my mistakes, I am being responsible for my decisions, and I can make corrections as I need to. I know I am not my behavior, and taking responsibility for it lets me feel competent and grown up. I feel resilient because I can take a step away from what I did to see what I can do. Perhaps I can make amends, but sometimes it’s better not to. And I can do something helpful for others to help me balance my feelings. I can forgive the mistake, let it go, and move on. How liberating!

On the other hand, when I feel wrong, I often feel shame, and that is one nasty emo-toxin. We get the idea that we are bad. That we are worthless, not deserving of good things or people in our lives. We feel humiliated, and that leaves us feeling disconnected. When we feel disconnected from our own selves we feel lonely, that awful black hole in the middle of the chest feeling. And we hate ourselves for doing whatever it was.

As if that weren’t bad enough, shame is very sticky. We can feel shame for things we did as tiny children for decades after we have forgotten the perceived transgression. All that poison in our thoughts just for mistakes. We often have unconscious resentments for the people who taught us to feel shame, even for the people we feel we have harmed, and then feel more shame for feeling resentful. Then we shove it deep into our unconscious and wonder why we feel awful.

We sometimes feel shame for things that are not even of our doing, an accident, or illness, or reversal of fortune. Sometimes we feel ashamed for being a human, “one of them.” Poor little we.

How can I choose? What makes me strong? How am I aware?

We are not doomed to live lives of shame. We can dissolve it. First, I need to identify the feelings. For me, it can either a physical sensation of “bad” or it might be a running monologue of how despicable I am. Once I have noticed the feelings, I can direct positive, compassionate feelings toward myself. I can forgive myself for the shame-torture, and I can recognize the good I do. I can allow myself to experience redemption.

I make it a matter of habit to use my good Creative Questions many times a day, and that changes my unconscious mind. I relax and breathe nice deep breaths. I cannot feel shame and relaxed together.

I didn’t dissolve my shame by myself. I had a lot, very deep. And I had a lot of really fine, high quality help. I still find pockets of it, but now have all these wonderful tools to let it go.

And to use the phrase I got from a dear friend, I now have a locus of control that I trust. That makes a world of difference.

How have I changed from feeling shame-based to feeling free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07172014

True Believers

True Believers

So here’s a Truth for you, something that is true for everyone. No one can change my beliefs but me. That’s important because our beliefs create our reality, the world we respond to. Our beliefs are pretty soft, pretty fluid, for the most part, once we start poking around in ‘em, and that means that we’ve got some powerful control over what we choose to believe, over the kind of world we live in.

Now, I believed for a very long time that what I believed was true for everyone, that my beliefs were a fact, like air, or breathing. I didn’t think about them, I just reacted to them, and wondered what was the matter with you that you believed something else.

Oh, poor little former self.

I believe that we are meant to live our natural lives; relaxed, peaceful, passionate, satisfying, contented, blissful, joyful. I believe all of us are an expression of the divine.

I know I am right, because that’s how we feel about our beliefs, just the way you know you are right about what you believe.

The question is, do my beliefs support me in living my best life, my natural life?

Why do I choose? How do I know I am right? How am I wise?

Because I am wise, I know to look at my beliefs. When I first wanted to find out how to know what I believed, I felt kind of stymied. I had a lot of help. One of the most useful things for me was to pick a big topic, like “people” or “money” and write down everything I think about that topic. Then I can look at those thoughts, and see the shape of my belief, the places where I believe supportive stuff, and the rest of it.

As we practice looking at our beliefs, we can start to poke at ‘em. We can pull out the parts that say, “I can’t, I don’t get to have.” We can start to notice what we say to ourselves, and tease out our beliefs that way.

“Life is hard, things never go my way, people are all this way, I can’t get ahead, nothing ever changes,” and on and on, we rehearse our bad beliefs, and know we are right.

These are answers to bad creative questions, and the way to shift ourselves out of these beliefs is with good creative questions.

How do my beliefs support me? Why do I decide? How am I positive?

Because I am the boss of my mind, I get to choose what I think is right. Because I am wise, I get to look into what might be a bad belief. Because I am compassionate, I know that you may have beliefs that don’t support you, and that you know you are right, just like I know I am right about the ideas I have that don’t support me.

That knowledge means that I can relax a lot about you. Since I know that you believe you are right, I don’t have to convince you of anything, and, on the other hand, I can look to be a role model for the joy of living my natural life.

How have I changed from being wedded to my beliefs to choosing to believe what supports me?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 06192014

Right as Rain

Right as Rain

You know, I’m right. You are, too. We are all right from our own point of view, and when we get that, boyoboy can we let go of stuff.

When we feel right, we feel good. When we feel like we have to prove we are right, we clench up. That doesn’t feel good, although, it may feel familiar.

Why am I right? What makes me choose? How do I have opinions?

Often, when we aren’t feeling confident in our opinion, or in ourselves, we get more and more shrill about being right.  We may try to pound our opinion into each other, sometimes we get so churned up we will really hurt each other in the name of our opinions. Dang.

Sometimes, these opinions, these beliefs, don’t support us living our natural lives. They can foment feelings of better than/less than, they can agitate feelings of isolation, or hate, dissatisfaction, discord, poor health, crummy jobs, and on and on.

As I choose to grow up, as I let go of my old, unsupportive beliefs, as I bring out more and more of my true self, I relax around being right. And, while I write to you everyday telling you what I think about stuff, I am only offering, and leave it up to you to take away from these thoughts the ones that you like, that feel supportive to you. As the saying goes, “take what you like, and leave the rest.”

Why do I choose my beliefs? What makes me decide?

I know that I can feel absolutely and unshakably right inside and be mistaken on the outside. That means that I take being right much more lightly that I used to. That’s because “right” is a feeling, not a fact. At the same time, as I grow up, I trust my gut way more than I used to. At the very least, it reminds me to be aware, to be mindful.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” Henry Ford said that. It really brought home for me the idea that right is relative.

I used to take that feeling of being right as an indication that I was carved-in-stone right. Now, I look at my attendant feelings; am I relaxed? Do I feel peaceful? Do I feel strong and competent? Do I feel blissful? Am I in my natural life? If the answer is yes, then hooray for me! If the answer is no, then I can look at where I am clenched, relax, and being right ceases to be important.

When I am living my natural life, I don’t think about being right or wrong. I don’t need to prove that I’m right, I don’t need to prove you wrong. When I am living my natural life, I recognize that there are many ways to accomplish something, many opinions that hold water, many contradictory beliefs that work to support us.

As I live my natural life, I lose my emotional rigidity, my belief in just one way. I understand that lots of ways will work to accomplish my goals and dreams, and so I feel a lot less pressure to do it “right.” I just need to do it. Now, my neck feels better, looser.

I still use my judgment, that’s a valuable gift, but I don’t feel like I need to batter you over the head with my ideas just because we disagree. I am better at shutting my mouth and living my example.

How have I changed from being rigidly right to allowing the way to flow?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05112014

How do you feel when you are sure?

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I Do Believe

I Do Believe

We’re right, you know. We’re right about all sorts of stuff. We’re right about all the stuff we think we are right about, except what we aren’t.

Huh?

We are so cute.

Right and wrong are fundamental to our being happy in the world. We need to know the difference, as our schoolteachers used to say.

Thing is, there is a certain degree of subjectivity involved. Morals, ethics, ethos, law, doctrine, dogma; we have a million ways to dictate our ideas of right and wrong to each other. The big strong ones are often the ones who get to decide on the law. They are often the ones who decide in our families, too. This can make things skew, putting some before others. It can create a lot of troublous situations for us down the road.

I have some fundamental ideas that I will share with you. Take what you like, and leave the rest, as the saying goes.

Truth is only Truth with a capital T if it is true for everyone. Every. One.

It is one thing for me to believe you are mistaken. It is another thing to believe you are bad. We are not our behavior.

People, at our core, are amazing and wonderful. Sometimes we get very far from our core. The farther we get, the stranger our behavior.

Thing is, we all think our beliefs are right.

It’s the nature of belief.

Thing is, a lot of our beliefs are bull bananas. (Do you like that, bull bananas? I made it up just for you.) We know that’s the case when our beliefs say that we suck, or that we are better than each other. We know it when our beliefs say that someone‘s self is bad because of what they believe, rather than their beliefs are bad.

Think is, while we can have really awful beliefs, still, we can change our beliefs. Really. We can decide what we want to believe. Really. A belief is an idea that we have rehearsed so much that it has gone deep into our unconscious minds, and affects our behavior and feelings from there.

We don’t much think about what we believe, because we believe it. we know it’s true. I need to start to pay attention to what I believe about how the world works. When I notice that I think the world sucks in some way, I have found a fixed delusion, a bad belief. I can poke around in it and find the deets, then I can dismantle it, and replace it with a belief that supports me, supports us, in living our natural lives of joy, bliss, satisfaction, contentment, and happiness.

Creative Questions are the easiest, cleanest, fastest way to get a new belief into play.

How have I changed from believing awful things to believing my life gets more wonderful all the time?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12232013

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Making Body Magic

Making Body Magic

I drew the “Why am I right?” card this morning. We’ve had it come up a bunch of times lately, so I was letting the question roll around in my head, and noticed that I really feel it in my body.

How do I feel when I feel wrong? Ask it, let it sink in, notice. Where do you feel “wrong” most vividly? My middle back folds in, my shoulders droop, and my breathing gets small.

And now, shake it off!

How do I feel when I feel right? Ask it, let this sink in. notice. Where do you feel “right” most vividly? Basically, my posture and breathing improve.

How about you? In your body?

This is useful information. It works surprisingly well for a number of things.

Twelve step programs use a phrase to help in the transition from what-I-was-like to what-I’m-like-now. They say, “act as if.”

If I want more confidence, it will help me to act as if I am confident. If I want to feel right more, it will help if I know how I feel when I am right. Same with positive, same with creative. Same with healthy. When I have bad headache, or cold, sometimes it helps to change my posture. Weird.

So one thing that will help me feel better is to be in my body with more awareness. My tendency is to get up in my brain, all thinking and intellectualizing. You know, philosopher and all that. Plus, my body hurt back in the day. A lot. All the time. So hightailing it into my thinky stuff helped distract me.

I started changing that by noticing my emotions, and learning to be aware of how I was feeling in the moment. That one took me a long time, lots of practice. But, as I learned to acknowledge my emotions at the time I was having them, I also started to feel better in my body. How curious.

And I learned that, while emotions lead to feelings which can lead to body postures, muscle tension, aches and pains, changing my body postures, relaxing muscles and so forth, can also have a big impact on my feelings and emotions.

Smiling with eye-crinkles and holding it for a minute or so actually causes a nice release of serotonin. An upright posture will help us feel more uplifted, and then we can put confidence, or being right, or creative, or positive on top of that.

And when we notice that we are literally in a slump (notice that we use that word for that thing) we can help ourselves out from it by not slumping in our bodies. It’s almost magical.

If I am feeling blue, I need to get up and dressed, and at least go out for a walk. If it’s grey outside, I will feel better if I can wear some light yellow lensed glasses. If I am seeing red, it will help if I can keep my breath deep, but slow it way down, the way it is when I am deeply relaxed. And so on. Putting my body into the postures and patterns of my goal-feeling is a wonderful, quick, and easy way to get where I wanna be.

How have I changed from feeling bad to being the boss of my thoughts, emotions, and feelings?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11272013

Lightening the Load

Lightening the Load

As a philosopher, I think about stuff. I thought about stuff before that, too, but I think I enjoy it more, now.

One of the topics I was thinking about recently is the difference between truth and Truth, being right and Right, and enlightenment. I have some notions to share with you.

Having been blessed with a number of mystical experiences throughout my life, it has been my experience that Truth with a capital T is really interesting, but not particularly useful.

Experiencing the oneness of existence doesn’t help when the washer is flooding the laundry room.

Becoming aware of my infinite divinity doesn’t help me decide what to wear to work tomorrow.

Flowing through the vastness of time and space is somewhat useless when I am trying to reconcile a financial document.

I am right when I know what I believe, and those beliefs support me and help me support you. I am Right when I hold an opinion with an iron fist regardless of the damage it might do. Hating stuff, or groups, is an example of this.

Feeling Right, does nothing for my spiritual development, especially if I make that little slip from right to righteous, in the sense of inflicting my sense of right onto you. I am of the opinion that if my sense of right hurts or harms you, I might wanna rethink it.

Feeling right, however, is really nice for my sense of confidence, sense of purpose, and sense of direction.

Feeling Right, is something I need to be aware of if it is causing me to steep in resentment, something I consider a gross waste of personal resources.

What I do find useful is enlightenment. Now, I will tell you that I used to think that enlightenment was something akin to flipping a switch and *bam* on came a light bulb that stayed on for ever and ever. Then, I thought that it was more like a flashlight that I could shine into the dark corners of my mind and ego, to deal with my emo junk.

When I stop worrying, when I don’t intellectualize, when I enjoy what I’m doing, and relax all the way through I feel light.

When I let go of my resentments, of wanting you, and me, to be different, and love and accept both you and me as we are, I feel light.

When I step out of my insulated cocoon of daily life, and see the world seething in all it’s weird gloriousness, I feel light.

When I release back into the stream all the stuff, of whatever kind, that leaves me feeling heavy, sad, afraid, or angry, I feel light.

Feeling light lets all sorts of lovely things happen. When I feel light, it is easy to be happy, to find bliss all around me, to have satisfaction in what I do, to love lightly, and deeply, and without judgment.

How have I changed from living a life of heavy darkness to laughing my head off in the light?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11072013

The Way of Right

The Way of Right

Don’t you just love being right? Me, too. There are, of course, different kinds of being right. There is being right about facts, or policies, or other things we can verify. There is being right, in line with our various community mores and ethics. Then, there is being right in our own self.

One of the things I love about my jobs is the interesting personalities I get to interact with, and seeing how changing my behavior makes a safe space for them to change theirs.

One fellow, known for shouting at his assistants on a regular basis almost never shouts at me, his newest assistant. I don’t engage. No one to shout with, so no more shouting. At the same time, he phases in and out of treating me, and others, like we are bad and wrong. We used to collectively get mad about it. That wasn’t fun, and the office would take days to settle down. Now we laugh about being “bad and wrong” and it’s become fun, and we mostly don’t even need to leave our “normal.” This change in my behavior allows me to be right, and he can be right, too, with no skin off my nose.

When I used to feel wrong all the time, it kind of put the kibosh on my confidence. I got all wrapped up in feeling wrong, and then felt all jumbly inside, so I made mistakes, and thought horrible things about myself. That, of course, got me thinking horrible things about you, because I couldn’t possibly be the reason for my screw ups. It made me search for ways that you screwed up, and I ended up seeing a lot of ugliness.

I have come to a place in my life where I believe that if, in order for me to be right, you have to suck, then I am wrong. If I believe that I have to bludgeon you to believe what I do, then I am wrong. If my beliefs make me scream, or feel crazy, or hateful, fearful or angry, I am wrong.

If my beliefs promote my natural life, peace, loving connection and engagement, creativity, health, prosperity, and joy, I am right. I also believe that if I live my life that way, and show up, you will want to join me. And don’t we have a good time!

One of the things I believe is that practicing awareness makes my life easier, nicer, and more fun. That means that I slow down a bit inside. Oh, I love that feeling. Slowing down a bit gives me some wiggle room for paying attention. Paying attention mean that I know where my keys are. And my wallet, and cell phone.

Slowing down a bit helps me get more done more accurately, so I think I am right: It’s a good thing to do.

I believe that, when we have hard stuff show up in our lives, we know what to do, even if we want to tell ourselves that we don’t know. When I know what to do I feel right. That’s a good thing.

I believe that remembering to relax throughout the day makes everything at least marginally better. The more I practice, the better I get. I used to have shoulders made of marble. Now they are made of meat. Much nicer. When I relax, I feel right. That’s a good thing.

How have I changed from looking for wrong, to being right?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09202013