Going For Easy

Going For Easy

What do you think about the idea that it could be easy? Do you think I’m full of baloney? Do you think that maybe this is easy, but not that? Do you nod your head and say, “Oh, yes, it’s all just so easy.”

We hear a lot about easy; taking it easy, easy does it, easy going, easy street. We hear people saying all the time that life isn’t easy. What would it mean to you if that weren’t a Truth? What would it mean if a lot of easy happens in our thoughts?

When I have a thought like, “This is so difficult,” I clench up. A nice visceral way to experience this is to make a tight fist and try to pick something up.

When I clench, everything gets more challenging. It’s why we have the second set of rules in my qi gong school; relax, relax, relax. I get ideas about how our life goes, and when we have decided that things will be hard to do, they will be hard to do. We will have lots of big, icky feelings. We will make unconscious choices that increase the difficulty. We will get what we expect. New Agers call this the Law of Attraction. We know it’s because of how we are filtering, and that we see, for the most part, what we expect to see.

When we are little, we have experiences based on our very short lives, and our limited understanding. We acquire a lot of mislearning as little ones, all of us. Our job as grownups in training is to correct these mislearnings to live our lives feeling free and happy, not the Yay-I-got-a-new-car kind of happy, but the happy that comes from living our natural lives of awareness, open heartedness, compassion, and wisdom.

Why could it all be just so easy? How do I relax? Why do I choose?

Going to the dentist was where I first really experienced the spectacular difference easy thinking could make in my life. In the olden days, I had an extraction. My face swelled up and looked bruised. I had a ton of pain. I expected to suffer, and suffer I did, for several days.

I had to have another couple extractions a few years ago. I had Creative Questions by then, and used ‘em. Why is my appointment gentle, easy, and fun? Why does my mouth feel great? And during the extractions: Why do I release my tooth with loving gratitude and joy?

No swelling, no bruising, and after the anesthetic wore off, no pain. Seriously.

When I think things are going to be hard, I get feelings of fear, anxiety, anger; stuff like that. Clenched. When I think things are going to be easy, I get feelings of joy, of fun, of excitement. Relaxed. When I assume things will work out in my favor, I feel relaxed, and can go with the flow. When I assume things will go against me, I feel tight.

Why is my timing perfect? How do things go my way? Why can I trust the Universe?

When I start expecting to be lucky, when I start expecting things to work out, when I expect to heal quickly and well, things change. When I take my emotions out of my physical discomfort, I relax and feel better. When I turn my thoughts to easy, things will get easier.

How have I changed from believing in struggle to enjoying the easy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 06012014

Doing Your Dirty Work

Doing Your Dirty Work

When we look at ourselves with loving and open eyes, we can see a lot. We can see our strengths and talents, we can see and value our accomplishments, we can see, with a gentle heart, places where we could use a little work.

When we look at ourselves with kindness and confidence, we can move mountains, we can carry the sky, we can eat an elephant, we can make weird metaphors.

When we look at ourselves with compassion and trust, we can shed the things that we do to make our lives harder, and nurture the things that make it just so easy.

Why am I strong? Why am I competent? Why am I capable? Why can I trust?

When I look at myself through those eyes, I can also see you through those eyes. I can nurture your strengths, and create a safe place for you to address your other stuff. I can listen with ears to hear you, rather than listening to make my clever answer. I can find the right words to help you let go of old crap.

Why am I an inspiration? How do I encourage confidence? What makes me a leader?

We have choices all the time. We can choose to inspire confidence, we can choose to dispirit with fear and shame. We can choose to create a safe space for emotional growth, we can choose to make a dark and scary place. We can choose to do this for ourselves or for others.

We’ve got the power!

Will I use my power for good or ill?

Recently, I have had several thing happen where I felt really bad, you know, like other people’s words had stabbed me in the heart, or kicked me in the gut. It took me a while to stop gasping at the injustice done me to notice that I was doing major victim response. I had totally bought into the pain those words were meant to cause, and was beating myself up with them. I had internalized those others’ anger at me, and was doing their dirty work.

I am going to lay an awful truth on you. I think you are strong enough to take it.

Every time I feel emotionally beat up, the person who is doing the beating is me. Same goes for you, same goes for all of us.

At some point in our lives, most of us enter into this hideous covenant with “others” that we will feel shame if they want us to, feel beat up when they say abusive stuff, feel anger when they flip our triggers, and so on. We agree to make ourselves feel awful in exchange for them saying rotten stuff to us, or doing rotten stuff.

You can’t make me feel bad, only I can make me feel bad.

When I decide that I am strong, and capable, competent, and trusting, you will not make me feel bad. You can say wretched things to me, I will hear you, but I will choose to feel strong and capable and competent, and trust myself. I will unchoose abusing myself as your proxy.

Hmm, there’s a bit of a feeling of manifesto there.

How have I changed from abusing myself on your behalf to being my own inspirational leader?

(c) Pam Guthrie

If you have entered into this covenant with someone, please re-read this, or maybe even print it out and put it somewhere you can remind yourself.

How do you feel when you are powerful?

Oh, and +1 and share, please, Thanks.

Esteem Cleaning

Self-loathing. Do you know anyone who hates themselves? How heartbreaking to hate ourselves, to constantly find fault, to say horrible things to ourselves, to feel like a burden to others, to even wish we were dead, when we are divine and infinite beings of brilliance and light.

How wonderful that so often it is based on mislearning and we can shift it around, because here I am, your slightly dinged, relatively shining example of someone who did just that. And now I have the power of Creative Questions. I can address that horrible characteristic at the source: My mind.

Why could I be okay? How am I acceptable? Why would I like me?

I will tell you truly, I tried affirmations for years, and frankly, they made me feel worse. I was not better and better every day, in every way. When I didn’t feel better, I felt like even more of a failure as a person.

Why can I cope? How do I find my resources? Why could it all be just so easy?

Turns out affirmations work best if you are doing pretty well, but kind of suck when you are trying to make a big change, or are already feeling blue. I mean, why would I want to be lying to me? I was living a very nasty life, and telling myself I was happy and healthy when I wasn’t was like an authority figure nagging at me to shape up, and what the hell’s the matter with you anyway. It made me so sad.

The difference between Creative Questions and affirmations is in how our brains process language. When we make a statement, like an affirmation, our brain takes it and stops, unless it starts to ask questions about the statement. The statement drops like a stone in sand, it can raise a little dust, but not much happens.

When we ask a Creative Question, it goes into our minds and kicks it into high gear. Our unconscious minds LOVE a good question formulated like a Creative Question, like dropping a stone in water, all those ripples start to happen. It starts looking for good answers. To supercharge a Creative Question you are working on, add “else” into the mix.

Why else am I good enough? What else makes me valuable? How else do I know I am a gift?

When we have people telling us for a long time that we suck, we buy it, then we start to believe it and internalize it. Our job as grownups-in-training is to change that belief, start to see our value and internalize that, and let go of the crap we absorbed in the olden days. As we move forward in this, we often find that we can even feel compassion for those sad people who hurt us. Why are we so amazing?

Why do I matter? How am I a wonderful surprise? Why do I own my worth?

Notice how you feel when you are asking these Questions. Notice if your body shifts around. For me, I often find I sit up a bit straighter, and a bit softer. Things relax. And then I know my posture for feeling good, and can put that on when I am asking my Creative Questions for even quicker results.

How have I changed from believing my bad PR to knowing I am a gift?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04292014

How do you matter? Why else do you know you are good enough? If you have found something valuable, or useful here, please interact with the page by + or sharing. Thanks.

Disbanding my Kangaroo Court

Disbanding my Kangaroo Court

Innocent is a lovely feeling. Innocent is a feeling I can totally  take for comfy, satisfied, granted. Guilty, on the other hand is really expensive. Innocent is a part of freedom. Guilty demands that we pacify it over and over and over. And over. What a lot of work for a crappy feeling.

And isn’t it interesting that the crappy feelings take a lot of work in general, and the good feelings don’t take any.

Why do I choose? How do I accept? What makes me decide?

For some of us, the guilt we feel is about things we do. I just had someone fail to flimflam me out of some cash. Poor him. That’s something he may feel guilty about, a bad decision to reconsider, and choose not to repeat. Sometimes we take stuff, or do something intentionally to hurt someone, cheat, or make a big lie. We can assuage our guilt for things like this by owning our behavior, making amends, and changing our behavior.

For others of us, the guilt we feel is about being alive. Existential Guilt is the fancy name. That was my favorite kind. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” is the motto of Existential Guilt. I developed breathing problems because I worried on a deep level that I was using up other people’s air. Seriously. I did all sorts of weird, overcompensating things to try to justify my existence. Oy.

We need to stop resenting ourselves for the first kinds of guilt. We need to make amends where we can, and apologize, and forgive ourselves. That means, if I have done what I can to clean up the situation, I stop beating myself up, And repeat as needed.

Forgiving ourselves for the second kind is a little weird, but we need to do that, too. We are not forgiving ourselves for being alive, we are forgiving ourselves for feeling bad about being alive. We are forgiving ourselves for all the strange things we did to try to make it up to the world for our existence. We trade out our mislearning for a supportive belief, and then we can let it go, and relax.

And relax. And relax. And relax.

One of my dear friends said that his behavior changed when he realized that he would rather not have to be making amends for his nasty smartypants talk, so he learned to hold his tongue, or say neutral things, or kind things, and not have to apologize. Easy. As we choose to grow up, we find all sorts of examples like this, places where we unchoose our old, painful ways, and replace them with new, elegant, easy, joy-inducing ways.

Why do I choose? What makes me respect myself? How do I feel good about me?

As we release our behavioral guilt, and our existential guilt, we often find that we are making better choices, choices that we feel proud of, rather than guilty. We may find ourselves feeling innocent.

How do I feel when I am innocent? Me, I feel uplifted, and open-hearted, relaxed, cheery, and happy. Innocence is part of my natural life, freedom from a bunch of stuff, ease, simplicity, creativity, peace. Ahhh.

How have I changed from doing stuff I feel guilty about to living in innocence?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04262014

What are some ways you've changed your behavior from guilt-inducing to clean and easy?

If you like what you find here, please + and share. It makes a difference. Why are you awesome?

Broken Record School of Communication

One of my best teachers used to talk about the Broken Record School of Communication. Her point was that when you are trying to get a point across to an audience who is full of buts, and yabuts, even if it is yourself, repeat repeat repeat.

She did it with me all the time.

I do it with me all the time.

We often get deaf when we are listening to ideas that might change our world view. Changing our beliefs is scary, even when what we believe sucks. Repeat repeat repeat.

My happiness comes from within. That was a big one for me to accept. All the shopping/drugs/video games/sex/whatever in the world might distract me, but it didn’t make me happy.

On the other hand, all creation is for my well-being. Opportunities arise for me to learn, grow, celebrate, rejoice.

How do I choose my life? What makes me decide on my attitude? Why do I choose to grow up?

What do I want? How do I want to feel? What are my goals? How does my environment support me?

Broken Record School of Communication.

There are so many places where simply repeating ourselves is more effective than any arguments, and most of the time, it’s more effective than raising our voices in annoyance or anger.

It is also a wonderful tool when we are learning to express ourselves. When we have been saying yes to everything for years, learning to say no is not only challenging for us, but for the people we’ve been people-pleasing for all this time. It teaches us to stick with it, and it eventually will get through to them.

Why do I choose, How do I pick my attitude? What makes me choose to grow up?

When I tap into a Creative Questions that resonates with me, that makes me feel good, where I see how things look up, I need to repeat repeat repeat.

What makes me see the choice? How do I grow up? Why do I take the high road?

Using our Creative Questions will change everything. Sometimes, the change happens instantly. Sometimes we have to chip away at it, playing with our topic, messing with the wording.

I will use words that you may like, or may really not like. My emotionally neutral words may fire you up like the Fourth of July. Find language that suits you. You know what hits you right. Put the lesson from the Broken Record School of Communication and use it when you need it. Remember that all creation is for your well being. And that’s beyond our wildest imaginings.

How have I changed from feeling helpless to recognizing my resources?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04242014

What are your favorite Creative Questions these days? Do you play with the wording? If you like what you find here, please + or share. It really does make a difference. Why are you amazing?

Choosing My Path

Choosing My Path

One of the features of many 12 step groups is the telling of one’s story. This telling provides value to the group in at least a couple ways. Way one, it lets new members know that horrible situations can get better. Way two, it reminds the teller of how far they’ve come.

Why am I capable? How do I know I progress? What makes me evolve?

We kind of get used to where we are because it took us a moment at a time to get here in general. Not like jumping in the deep end of the pool. No one was born competent. No one was born speaking, to the best of my knowledge. We acquire these things. I didn’t develop a drinking problem overnight, I worked on it diligently, day after day. Same with coke and pills. My abusive relationships escalated one day, one event at a time. Telling my story occasionally helps me remember how much I have accomplished.

I grow up one day at a time.

We are capable, we are born that way. Each of us is capable of growing up. We do it one day at a time, one tiny choice at a time.

Sometimes, stuff happens and we get stuck, one day at a time. We may stop growing up for a while, then, until we get choose to get unstuck. When I was choosing mood-altering chemicals, most of the time I wasn’t actively drinking or snorting or popping or smoking. I was, however, choosing that path. When I decided to stop, there was all that time in a day when I hadn’t been actively choosing that path, but then would come the moment when I had to start making tiny choices to change it. A tiny choice to put the pills and coke and dope down the toilet. A tiny choice to pull all my booze from my hidey holes and dump that. A tiny choice to try a new way, I was scared, but I was more scared to stay where I was.

Why am I competent? Why can I choose? What makes me decide?

I choose to grow up because each little step I’ve taken, things have gotten a bit better. I choose to believe what my spiritual teachers have told me, that a happy life is normal, an easy life is normal. A satisfying life is normal

I wanted normal.

Why am I skilled? How do I know I am wise? What makes me shine?

When I decide to choose to live, to choose me, to choose to make it better, I put a lot of stuff in place. Ego is going to fight me hard. Ego likes status quo no matter how much it’s killing me. Ego likes to keep the boat steady, no rocking. Becoming a grown up rocks that damn boat half onto it’s gunnels and back again. Becoming a grown up is exciting and challenging and fascinating and angrifying, and scary and thrilling. And worth it.

Why am I capable? Why do I choose calm? How do I know I am courageous?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 03112014

Honing Trust

Honing Trust

Oo, trust. What a wacky thing that is. There are a bunch of ways that trust works, it’s a thing and an action. We can trust well, or poorly, supportively or destructively.

I can choose whom to trust, with whom to be vulnerable. I can choose to let go of fantasizing that I know the outcome, and choose to assume I will be okay however it works out. I can choose to trust trustworthy people. I can choose to trust my wisdom, and instincts.

I didn’t used to.

I used to brilliantly and consistently trust untrustworthy people. I was in totally denial of my own wisdom, I always knew for sure that things were going to go horribly wrong, and when they didn’t, I knew it would just be worse the next time. “Cheer up, things will get worse” was a phrase I heard a lot, and totally took to heart.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m so glad I was wrong.

How can I choose to feel safe? What makes me protected? Why do I let my life unfold?

As I choose to grow up, I choose to take responsibility for me. That means responding to a lot of stuff. I am responsible for my thoughts. Now, don’t get me wrong, thoughts flow. That’s their nature, and I don’t have a lot of control around what is in that flow as it burbles up from my unconscious mind. But, I do have control of the thoughts I think about. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s profound.

Working that distinction is a skill that meditation affects, that of letting thoughts flow, and letting them go the moment you realize you are thinking them. There are lots of good thoughts to think, and circumstances under which to think them. My whole organism does better when I think positive thoughts, look for the good, and trust.

When I take responsibility for me, I am responsible for my feelings, which are complex blends of thoughts and emotions. If I feel crappy, it’s my responsibility to look at that feeling, dissect it, so to speak, so that I can let it go. I may need to take measures. For example, I used to get really blue every Sunday from about 11 am until about 5 pm. I ran away from it for a long time, by working, but it was still there. When I finally just sat through it a few times, pushing on it a bit, I was able to break it, and now, most of the time I can enjoy a Sunday all the way through.

When I take responsibility for me, I am responsible for my physical well being. That means I feed and water myself with care, clean myself, make sure I give myself some good exercise every day, challenge my mind, and get some decent sleep. It means I take some time to meditate, and contemplate, and practice my Creative Questions. These things take very little time, or a lot, but I get to choose how I do it. Some days I don’t. I am responsible for that, too.

When I take responsibility for me, I begin to find my wisdom. We all have it, deep down somewhere in there. Little by little, we haul it out and give it a test drive. And each time we get it right, we get a little stronger. We start to believe in ourselves, and, as we nurture that, it grows, and grows.

How have I changed from misusing my trust to putting it where it does the most good?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 01272014

Abandoning the Emo Ghetto

Abandoning the Emo Ghetto

Today I drew the “Environment” card. Mostly when this card comes up, I like to think about our physical environments. But we have other environments in which we live. We have our internal environment that we create with the quality of our thoughts. We have our spiritual environment. And we have a social/emotional environment that we create with the people we surround ourselves.

Huh. That’s interesting. What kind of a social environment do you live in? Is it warm, and lively, and full? Is it cold, and grim, and full of drama? Is it almost empty? Is it crowded and lonesome?

Finding new ways to think about our old stuff can help us shift out from places we may be feeling stuck. So, let’s take a look at the people we fill our lives with.

In the dark ages, I knew some wonderful people; kind, loving, wise and generous, crazy talented. I also knew dark, grim, abusive, terrifying, miserable people who seemed to shun the light in favor of the dismal dank. They were often really interesting, and also crazy talented. Compelling. Seductive.

The deeper in I went, the fewer lovely people I knew, and the darker the folks were whom I was spending time with. A day that was just dark was a good day.

Soon, I’d stopped working days, and started working nights. In the winter, I never saw the sun. We were all so starved for attention, but all we could ask for was negative attention. I felt like I was full of a heavy, huge, black hole where my heart used to be.

When I decided to change my life, one of the things I had to do was change my social environment. I wanted to stop using alcohol and recreational drugs, so I needed to stop spending time with people who did. I wanted to be soul-happy, so I had to start looking for friends who got that. They didn’t need to be happy, just wanting to get there, willing to do something to get there.

For my own growth and well being I had to walk away from all my friends not once, but twice.

Why do I respect my people? What makes me choose to grow? How am I supported?

When I look at my people with an open and honest eye, what do I see? Do I see people who encourage me in my best? Or people with whom I love to trash talk, or misery merge, or share activities but not intimacy? Do I have friends, or bad-behavior buds?

It meant that I had to do some stuff. I had to choose people who seemed respectable, kind, and real. I had to choose to trust that, if I gave them a pointy stick and showed them where it would hurt me the most to poke, that they wouldn’t. I had to open my heart. Boy, was that door creaky!

On the one hand, I made a lot of mistakes. On the other hand, I found some wonderful friends who have weathered all my changes and interesting adventures for years.

Choosing our social environment is another step in choosing happiness, another piece of becoming a grownup. Choosing intimacy is an act of courage. Taking responsibility for all our environments helps us make our lives easy, makes it easy to relax, to move into peaceful, to accept and allow our lives to flow.

How have I changed from living in an emotional ghetto to choosing to live in a place of warmth, understanding, and love?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01032104

Banishing Dark Sufferance

Banishing Dark Sufferance

My absolutely favorite card of all, my absolutely favorite Creative Question of all came up today, Why is it so easy?

We like to imagine that it’s hard. They say that suffering is a matter of course. That human nature is inherently bad. We also like to imagine that fortune and justice are blind, that Santa Claus is a myth, and they say that we can’t change our spots.

They lie like paint on sand, like a dog on a rug, like a bad toupee.

I see people changing all the time. Sometimes, we see that rapid change when someone discovers a recreational drug.

I saw that change in me, when I did my time on speed and cocaine. The beginning of the end of the dark ages  was seeing a photo of me taken when I thought I was all that, lived on 6 soda crackers a day, with caffeine and drugs, for several months, and oh, dear, the look of my face was terrifying to me. One more piece in my choosing happiness.

As we choose over and over to grow up, to evolve, to touch the center of our perfect selves, to flash into enlightenment awareness, easy comes along as a matter of course.

Why would I choose to grow up? What makes being a grownup fun?

I often know that I’ve taken a detour because it feels hard. When I notice that feeling, of struggle, of dark effort, I take it as a cue to pause, to go inside, to slow down, to find my peace.

The weird thing is that, even though nothing on the outside has changed, getting to that place inside changes everything, and everything feels easier. It can happen in an instant. Really.

Why do I stop worry in its tracks? Why would I choose to feel peaceful? What makes me relax all the way through?

There is nothing that being worried, stressed, angst-y, and clenched can’t make worse.

Why would I choose easy?

When I recenter myself, all that crapola falls off. When I recenter, and restart my Creative Questions, my unconscious mind begins to cook on my well being, and the under current moving me forward gets strong again. When I recenter, I remember that my attitude and POV create my reality, and if there is stuff I don’t like, I can shift my insides to, at the very least, allow it to be.

(I really do this. I don’t just blather on about it. I had a very weird day yesterday, and am using my tools as we speak to bring me back to easy, joyful, satisfying, and so on. Why do I like easy?)

Easy is something I like to practice on every day, especially on the little stuff. The little stuff is easy, and the medium stuff, then, gets easier. Then, when the big hard horrible stuff comes up, I can cope. I can cope in ease, I can cope with peace. Or I can get their pretty fast because I’ve spent all that time carving the pathways in my brain.

How have I changed from buying the idea of hard to seeing that I can make it easy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12272013

Large and In Charge

Large and In Charge

One of the gazillion things I love about being a grownup is that, since I am just me, I never have to think about how to be. I assume you will like me, I assume we will get along, I don’t second guess what I’ve said to you, and I feel comfortable in my own skin. It wasn’t always like that.

So many of us feel like we are somehow not up to snuff. So we pretend we feel stuff we aren’t feeling. We pretend we are confident, we pretend not to be afraid, we pretend to like stuff, we pretend and pretend and pretend. Sadly, it’s not the fun kind of pretending, it ends up being almost desperate. We end up feeling exhausted, and like big fat fakes.

Poor we.

When we look to the outside world for our own authentication, we will always feel like we fall short.

The phrase I used to hear all the time was, “people pleasing.” We work so hard to try to make stuff nice for others, to make them like us. We work so hard to get them to think well of us, but the truth is, people can tell when we are faking it, even if they say otherwise, we get a feeling about it.

How do I know I’m the real deal?

In the dark ages, I desperately wanted someone to rescue me. I wanted someone to run my life for me, since I’d made such a mess of things. I tried so hard to be everything to everyone that I made myself sick. A lot. Just little things, you know; colds, tummy upsets, headaches, backaches, sore feet. I felt kind of bad most of the time.

When I decided to grow up, when I decided to turn to myself for my own approval, things started to change.

Why am I responsible for me?

I love that, the little thrill of anticipation we get when we are ready to make a good, big change in our lives. I love that we start getting results quickly when we take a step in the right direction.

When I was focused on trying to please you, I never noticed my self as a divine creation. It was pretty hard for me to notice much of anything.

When I stopped trying to please you, being aware, noticing what was going on around me, and within me, was so much easier.

When I stopped trying to please you, I found loads of things I was interested in. I discovered places I wanted to go. My own life got really interesting and fun.

Choosing to stop trying to please the outside world is huge. I end up with a sense of freedom. I end up with a sense of autonomy. I end up with a sense of my own power.

How have I changed from feeling like it’s all up to you to taking charge of my own self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11112013