Changing My Ways

Changing My Ways

I am not my behavior. You aren’t, either. This is really important, especially if we have feelings of being bad and wrong.

A lot of us feel like that. We feel like we can’t do enough. We feel like we can’t do it right. We feel like there is something wrong with us. Sometimes we end up feeling unloved or even unlovable.

Our feelings are born of our thoughts.

I am not my behavior. I am also not my thoughts. I am a divine and infinite being in human form, and subject to human frailties.

What?

All that means, is that I can take a step back and think about what I think about. How cool is that. It means that I can develop an awareness of self that reaches deep inside me. I can look at my thoughts and actions, and see patterns, and as I see those patterns I don’t like, I can come up with ways to change them. How fabulously cool is that!

I can change my ways.

In the dark ages, I felt like a prisoner of my stupid behavior and horrible judgment. I felt mired up to my neck in bad feelings, and feeling like I was a bad person.

If I find that I feel bad, wrong, useless, inadequate, incompetent, and so on, I have a nice, clear task. Because now that I know I am a divine and infinite being, I know that I am living a lie. I am good enough, I just need to get there. I can change my ways.

The easiest way I know to do that is to change the root of the thought that I’m not good enough. If I can find the first instance of me having that thought, and work through it there, all I have to do is watch for, and interrupt, the habit of it.

If I can’t find the root, Creative Questions will still erode that original trauma, and the more I work with my Creative Questions, the more I will relieve those bad feelings. I have even had the experience that the right Creative Question created instant results.

Why am I good enough. How do I know I am valuable? What makes me feel useful? Why am I so competent? How do I feel when I feel good enough?

The more I work with my questions, the more my thoughts will change. The more my thoughts change, the more my behavior changes. It’s automatic. And that makes it so easy.

Once I start experiencing these nice, new changes, I feel accomplished. Feeling accomplished feels good, and those feelings will grow. How am I accomplished? Why am I accomplished?

So, ask good Creative Questions with the results you want built in. Notice your new responses to your new thoughts. Watch for old habits, and interrupt them the moment you notice. I find that becoming still, or saying, “stop.” or taking a deep, slow breath is often enough to disrupt an old habit I want to change. Sometimes I find it useful to stick up notes on my walls to remind me, but be sure to either use your good Creative Questions, or a positive reminder.

How have I changed from feeling bad to knowing, believing, and feeling good enough?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12072013

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You, the Creative Genius

You, the Creative Genius

One of my very most favorite things about being a human is being creative. Now, I will say that I am a very creative person. You are, too. We often discount our creativity because we don’t think of the channels where we use it as being creative channels.

What the heck am I talking about, you ask?

Well, like so many other things, the more we use our creativity, the more creativity we get. I’ve been writing to you every day for nineteen months. I wouldn’t have thought I could before I did. Here, my creative mind is a huge asset, and cultivating it in this arena makes me happy, and helps me stay focussed on what matters to me.

But we have places where our brilliant, creative minds do us a spectacular disservice.

Did you ever wonder how Stephen King came up with all those creepy, scary stories? If you think that he sat around in a lovely, cozy, sunny room with lemonade and cake, you're wrong. Poor Mr. King came up with those from his own, anxious worry, and terrible nightmares. He discovered that he felt some relief if he wrote them out.

He cultivated his anxiety and worry, and it almost killed him over and over. Poor Mr. King. At least he won fame and fortune, even if he was miserable.

When we are worrying, we are composing fictions. Unless we are writing it down and selling it for thousands of dollars, it is not benefiting us in the least. In fact, it is literally eating up our bodies. Worry, anxiety, and guilt are the cannibal emotions, devouring our physical bodies, our spirit bodies, our emotional bodies, and our mind.

They are the heartless, and heedless emo zombies. They make you feel like you are doing something productive, and don’t care that when they have killed you from within, they must find a new host body. There is always a new host body. Bwahahahahah!

Ok, I am being silly, but being creative in our worry and guilt is dumb. Stop it. And seriously, that’s what we have to do.

We can take ameliorating drugs, but they don’t change the thought habit, they only fuzz it up. It’s up to us to use our creativity to stop ourselves from going there.

I used a rubber band on my wrist and snapped it whenever I start into worry or anxiety. I would say, “Stop it!” outloud and then push my mind into something pleasant. I had to make lists of nice stuff to think about because I was so used to wallowing in dark, stinky places in my mind, and when I got into those places, there was no such thing as sunshine or joy.

When it’s the middle of the night, and you are lying in bed with the emo zombies chomping on your peace, and you can’t seem  stop them there, get up. It’s worth losing a little sleep to slay them. Make a list of things you are grateful for, or things you appreciate, or love, or things you like to do. Clean something, learn the words to a song you like, or a poem. I love you, but I cannot stop your emo zombies, only you can. Choose. Decide. Act.

By using our creative minds for good rather than for evil, we change our world at it’s innermost point, maybe by only one degree, but as that single degree moves out from that center, it encompasses more and more of our own life, and creates a happy and peaceful space for our loved ones and extended community as well. That’s means that when you choose to slay your zombies, you are saving the world.

You rock.

How have I changed from treating my emo zombies to the best of me, to using my creative genius to save the world?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09212013

It’s Alive!

It’s Alive!

Alive! How much fun is being alive! Engaged, present, aware, connected, happy, satisfied. Being alive is so full of great adjectives. It’s so much nicer than when what I thought I wanted was oblivion.

Sometimes we have a topic in our lives that seems overwhelming. We can’t come up with a solution. We get really scared, and so what we decide to do is escape, or get sick, or die.

I haven’t seen the last one often, but from time to time I have seen it happen. It’s more common that we will get sick, and most common that we escape. How sad. We all have our favorite ways of escaping; TV, glamorizing, fighting, drug and alcohol and food binges, the news, watching sports, gambling, shopping, and so on. I have my favorites, too, but they don’t really help, it just puts off what we need to do.

We talk about the getting sick phenomenon when we say that XYZ makes us sick. I don’t make this stuff up. The more research we do, the more we find out how literal is the connection between our minds and bodies. And the more we clear out our old emotional traumas, the healthier our bodies get.

And so we spend our days feeling sick or miserable, or distracting the heck out of ourselves, and the troubles grow and grow until they fall on our heads.

Meanwhile, we are asking horrible creative questions. Why am I so stuck? Why do I feel so bad? Why do I have such terrible problems? How do I know I can’t handle this? What makes me fail?

And you see what happens. We answer those horrible creative questions, and those answers make us feel horribler and horribler. And we do more and more stuff to avoid.

I drank for oblivion. Gross. Blackouts are awful. Why am I such a loser? Why am I so messed up? Oh, yeah, bad questions.

So then, we have to break those patterns and habits, and shift ourselves into a new, higher frequency. We are worth so much more. Even if we have learned to ask bad creative questions. Even if we do think the answers we get to those bad questions are true.

We are worth a happy life. We are worth learning to ask good Creative Questions. We are worth more than we can imagine.

Why am I so alive? What makes me feel so lively? Why do I enjoy living? Why do I find solutions?

What makes me feel excited? Why do I feel so engaged? What makes it so fun?

As I practice asking these questions, I start finding more fun. I start finding more exciting things to do. I enjoy more spontaneity. They make subtle shifts deep inside, and those shifts make it easier for me to feel more; more joy, more excitement, more engaged with life. As I stop asking horrible questions, it is way easier for me to relax. And when I relax, I feel more peaceful, even when I am having an exciting time. What a fun and goofy contradiction!

How have I changed from trying to hide to loving being alive?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09082013