How to Lose the Losesr

How to Lose the Loser

Why do so many of us feel like we are losers? It’s so sad. For some of us, our adults regaled us with negative emotional judgments. For some of us, we learned to compare ourselves unfavorably to others. There are other reasons; you may know yours. For me, I learned that there was nothing I could try at which I wouldn’t fail. It was pounded into my head, first by some of my adults, and later, just me by my own self. My belief made trying to progress in my life very challenging.

Some of us believe we are losers almost to our core, but try to fight it so hard by acting as if we are better than everyone. We are constantly putting down those around us as incompetents, terrified to look at how inadequate we feel, terrified that someone will notice what losers we are.

Opposite sides of the same, fundamental belief; that we are not good enough, that we are losers. A belief based on mislearning.

What does that mean; a belief based on mislearning?

Our beliefs are simply the filters through which we view the world. We hold them dear, we treat them as Truth. Occasionally they are True, that is, True for everyone, but mostly they are just ideas we’ve taken on. Some beliefs, like the notion that infinity is infinite, not more or less infinite, is a belief that is pretty benign. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t Truth. A belief like “I am a loser” is both false and pretty damaging.

So what do we do with a belief like that? We change it. Sometimes changing a belief is easy peasy. Just a simple challenge can be enough to send a bad belief packing. Sometimes, we need to chip away at a bad belief, and that’s why Creative Questions are so helpful.

Why am I so successful? How do I know I win? What makes me feel triumphant? How have I changed from feeling like a loser to knowing I am victorious? Why do I own my success? Why am I proud of me?

Sometimes, we don’t really know what we believe. I know, that is kind of weird, but it’s true. Finding out is so important if we want to change them to supportive beliefs. It’s pretty simple, although not necessarily easy.

To discover what you believe about yourself, notice what you tell yourself about you. One of my favorites was “What’s wrong with you?” There were many variation on that question, but it always got me going on the things that were “wrong.” Sometimes I told myself disparages like, “You are so stupid! You are so ugly! You can’t do anything right!” I know that if you are reading this, you have your own “favorites.”

The happy news is that we can use those horrible things we tell ourselves to make beautiful, life-changing Creative Questions. It’s what the “How have I changed” Questions are for.

How have I changed from feeling wrong to knowing I am amazing? How have I changed from thinking I am stupid to owning my wisdom? How have I changed from feeling ugly to seeing my own beauty? How have I changed from feeling like I can’t do anything right to knowing I am competent?

See? You just find the opposite of the horrible thing you say to yourself, and make it into a Creative Question. Then, whenever you notice yourself being awful to you, use the new Question. You can also add the word, “else” to the Question for even more awesomeness: How else have I changed from ...

How have I changed from feeling like a loser to owning how I am a winner?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 05262015

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

Counting My Pennies From Heaven

Counting My Pennies From Heaven

What do you think about the big picture?  We have so many words for it; God, The Universe, Force of Nature, Higher Power. We have very strong beliefs in this arena, beliefs for which we are willing to kill each other in huge numbers. Okay. So, we will now quietly leaving this space, and get around to the business at hand.

The question I’m asking is more like this. Do you believe that your environment is malevolent, benign, or benevolent?

I used to believe that people sucked, and God felt sorry for me because he loved me, but wasn’t really gonna do anything.

I don’t think that God is actually something that behaves like a dysfunctional human any more. I’ve kinda decided to go with the notion that God is greater than I can imagine.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve become kinder and more compassionate, so I decided that my higher power is infinitely kind and compassionate. That’s a nice thought, useful, even.

If that’s the case, my belief, then it would follow that the Universe is benevolent towards me. I like that, too. If that’s the case, then the things that occur in my life, and my environment, are meant  to support me.

How would my environment support me? How do my circumstances benefit me?

I mean, what if I am a divine and infinite being who forgot that’s what I am. And, since the universe is divine and infinite, it’s doing everything it can to help me get back there. It provides opportunities and resources for me to chip off that accreted gunk that blocks my memory of my true self. It does everything it can.

So, lately, my environment has been awash in change. Circumstances have been highly charged, emotionally fraught, with changes in the physical look of stuff happening all over. In the olden days I would have freaked out. I would have flipped into cowering, helpless victim, and hated it all.

But, if this is a gift, if these circumstances are here to support me, then all I need to do is find that supportive piece, and apply it.

I find it helpful to label my current gifts from the universe, the pattern or attitude or old trauma I’m being given the opportunity to clean up. Right now I have two big ones up; unchoosing victim, and working through the fear of an old pattern coming up again.

I know I can do this work because I am a resourceful grownup. I don’t need to hide, or run away. Because I am a resourceful grownup, I know that “victim” is a mind-set, and attitude, and I can unchoose it quickly by asking myself stuff like, Why am I strong? How do I know I am capable? How do I know I am competent?

Because I am a resourceful grownup, I know that my fear of that old pattern recurring is about negative thoughts, and I can easily change those with questions like, How have I changed from doing X to doing Y? and How do I feel when I do Y? Then I just need to sit in those new feelings for a while. Sometimes, I have unfinished internal business around that old pattern, and may need to clean that up. Sometimes I need a little help, but I can find help because I am a resourceful grownup.

How have I changed from feeling threatened by my environment to finding my amazing gifts and support?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04052014

What gifts have you been getting from the Universe lately? Remember to + and share if you like what you find. How do you feel when you recognize the gift?

The New Head Honcho

The New Head Honcho

Happy card came up again today. When cards show up frequently, I know we have some work to do on the topic. So here is my question to you:

Do you believe me when I say that happiness comes from inside us? Do you believe me when I say that our point of view, our judgments, decide whether a thing, or situation is good or bad, that they don’t have an inherent plus or minus grade? Do you believe me when I talk about how we can choose our natural life, full of bliss and peace and satisfaction and contentment?

Or do you think, “Oh, that Pam. She’s full of beans.”

Changing our ideas about how the world works can be really challenging. Being willing to consider that everything doesn’t suck, being willing to buy into the notion that the world is a nicer, kinder, better place today than it has been takes a leap, takes trust. On a smaller scale, believing that we can change our lives, change ourselves, may seem impossible. Believing that we can live a nice life, with activities that satisfy us, in a peaceful, fun environment, and people who love us, whom we are crazy about, may seem impossible.

We have the power.

We limit ourselves with our notions, we hold ourselves back with our ideas, we imprison ourselves with our thoughts. We mislearn our fundamentals as tiny children, and then keep finding junk to support those mislearnings as we get older, until we are so mired in our own cesspools of bad ideas that we can barely see the good. Okay, that might be a little bit strong for a lot of us, but it sure was the truth for me.

My thinking was like this. I am doomed. I am doomed to live in a sick and pain filled body. I am doomed to only have abusive people for friends. I am doomed to work crappy jobs for peanuts. I am doomed to poor sleep filled with nightmares, to feel right at the edge of suicidal most of the time. I am doomed, well, the list went on.

I wasn’t doomed, I was choosing to believe my mislearnings. Simple. And all I had to do was change my beliefs.

What makes me feel good? Why do I choose a nice life? What makes me decide to live in new ways?

Why do I choose to feel well? How do I trust my body? What makes me find my health?

How do I choose good relationships? Why am I supported? Why do I engage?

When I begin to assume things will work out for me, when I believe that I am fortunate, when I decide that stuff goes my way, things shift around inside me. The events of the world don’t necessarily change, but my experience of them shifts dramatically.

I find gratitude, I find appreciation, I find that I feel blessed. When I get those feelings, I feel bliss easily, I feel joy easily. I enjoy what I do, and I can do what I enjoy. People may not treat me better, but I don’t take things personally, I don’t take on abuse, I don’t derive my self-esteem from their opinions.

How have I changed from letting my childhood self run the show to taking charge of my life?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02282014

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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How to Find Your Most Beautiful Self

How to Find Your Most Beautiful Self

Oh, you are gorgeous. Your divine self is all shiny and beautiful. I can see that part of you. Can you? Can you see your natural self? Can you see how lovely you are, and how your natural self is so attractive?

Or are you stuck in feeling like you don’t fit in, you don’t match something, you don’t look right? Sometimes we feel like we are too this way, or not enough that way.

Things happen in our lives that mess up our beliefs about how the world works in a whole lot of ways. One of those is about the way we look. We get ideas about how we should look to be attractive, and we often think that the way we should look is the way we don’t look.

We think our face should be different, our muscles should be different. We think we are too tall or short, too fat or skinny, to light or too dark. Our eyes are the wrong color, our feet are too something, or we have a spot.

If you are making your living by your appearance, some of those things may be true, the same way professional athletes have to do different things with their bodies for their jobs. and some people go to extraordinary lengths to change their looks.

This topic has been very interesting to me, especially since I started studying face reading. Wow. Between our faces, our walk, our postures and gestures, we tell each other so much about ourselves. We don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves, but on our faces.

The harder I try to not feel unattractive, the more I struggle to feel attractive, the weirder it can get, and often means I will just feel worse. And possibly just look more and more different.

But here’s the thing. No matter what we look like, when we are relaxed and soften into our natural life, we are radiantly gorgeous. It’s part of the deal. The more we let go of bad, old beliefs, mistrust of the Universe, self-hate and -punishment, the more of our True selves we have.

How do I know I am beautiful? What makes me attractive? Why do I feel lovely?

There is a difference between taking care of ourselves, and struggling to make ourselves attractive. There is a difference between pampering ourselves, and punishing ourselves. The more we relax our thoughts, our emotions, our bodies, the easier it is for us to choose taking care, and pampering over punishing and struggling.

The more we move away from trying to fit a standard, and embrace our true self with love, the more we show up, in our true self, in our natural gorgeous appearance, radiating peace, and satisfaction, bliss and contentment. People see us for who we are at our center, not for our past, or our history or our story.

We respond to the world, then, from our core, our perfect self. We see the world with compassionate eyes, with patient ears, with gentle and powerful touch, with wisdom, and boundaries, and love. And as we show up this way in the world, we create space for our people to find their core, their perfect selves, their natural lives. We can talk and talk, but it’s by living our talk that we make that space happen for our loved ones, for ourselves.

And when we look in the mirror, then, we smile with love at this beautiful person who has done so much to make our life comfortable, joyful, satisfying, and peaceful -- our very own self.

How have I changed from feeling ugly or less than, to seeing the truth of my radiant, beautiful self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11292013

Please do not buy a deck of Creative Questions Cards today. If you have the day off from work, find someones you love to spend some time with, feel grateful for something, and peace in.

Discharging Guilt

Discharging Guilt

Floods, fire, famine, earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor strikes; natural disasters causing all sorts of bad stuff. There is one more that should be on the list, and that’s guilt.

I’m not talking about the guilt we feel about not calling our moms, or sneaking out of work early, or hanging onto the extra change the clerk gives us, the stuff we can easily correct.

I’m not even talking about fooling around with your neighbors wife, or stealing, or even murder. Those are actions with consequences, ways we can atone, pay that debt to society for a lapse, however serious, in our good judgment.

I’m talking about that deep rooted guilt we feel for being alive.

The professionals call it Existential Guilt, I tend to think of it as  “the Universal I’m sorry,” and boy oh boy does it make trouble. I started getting called on saying “I’m sorry” all the time when I was twelve.

When we feel guilty for being born, for being alive, for breathing, or taking up room, our thoughts are going to cause us trouble, our feelings are going to make us suffer, and our behavior will often just make things worse.

It can go several ways. We might try really hard to prove that we aren’t guilty, striving to do good works, going into helping professions, tons of volunteer work, and still feel like it’s not enough, we can’t make good, and we are still guilty.

So, then what happens might be that we get crabby, or perfectionistic, go to negative emotional judgments, thinking on some level that if I’m guilty, so are you, and you should try harder, and you are bad and sinful, and we spew it around like puke off a tilt-a-whirl.

Was that too gross? It is pretty gross.

Another possibility is that we withdraw. We may try to numb the guilt with drugs or alcohol or pain or food or exercise or sex or working too much. We pretty much disconnect from our loved ones, hiding away how bad we are and how bad we feel about being so bad.

Or we might decide that, since we are sinners, we may as well sin. I don’t have to give you examples, you just have to turn on your TV to see this one playing out; dramas, sitcoms, the news. Oh, yeah, the news. How much of the awful stuff you see on the news happens because someone feels guilty for taking up air.

How do I know I am pure? Why am I clean? How do I feel when I feel like a good person?

The mis-learning of existential guilt is one of the worst ones we get. We may pick up intra-utero that our mom doesn’t want to be pregnant with us. Yes, we are conscious and learning, even in the womb. We may feel that we have caused her pain or ruined her life, or that we are somehow evil in our mere existence, and down we go. And the thought burrows deep into our unconscious mind until it seems like it is simply part of who we are; personality DNA.

Yeah, that’s hooey. At our core, we are perfection, spotless, clear and divine. Existential guilt is just another bad habit, even if it is one of our earliest bad habits, and we can change it with Creative Questions, and practice. I just have to choose.

How have I change from feeling guilty to feeling my innocence?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10192013

Wearing My Fancypants Out Loud

Wearing My Fancypants Out Loud

I am always fascinated by us. I mean, we are so very interesting. The Creative Questions card I drew this morning was, “Why am I a gift?” I had so many thoughts on the topic, it took me a little while to settle on one.

Why would I choose to accept me as I really am?

The phrasing is a little clunky, but the idea is there. We tend to way underestimate ourselves. We do that for a vast number of reasons, most of which we aren’t even aware of.

I’m not talking about about a full minute Superbowl commercial promoting our dazzling awesomeness, but I am talking about recognizing our gifts, our contributions, our value.

So often we deny our value, to ourselves, to each other, to the world in general. We learn that to own it is somehow bad. And so we hide our proverbial light under the proverbial bushel, where glimmers peak out, and we feel a bit ashamed of how wonderful we are, as though to simply and completely be ourselves is somehow shameful.

So we hold back. We think small. We take baby steps. And when things get a little bit bigger, sometimes we freak out. and throw our sabots into the machinery.

Or we get so big and poofy that no one can see the real we, either. Huge goals, huge dreams, but we hide our real selves deep in the nooks and crannies.

What a sad waste of us.

I had a thing about “hubris.” Like being myself meant I was being too much, or overstepping my bounds, or putting on my fancypants.

Well, it turns out that I like my fancypants, so I needed to find a way that I could wear ‘em and not be struck down by the wrath of the heavens.

As has been the case in the past for me, it took me a long time, and, frankly, It continues to be a topic for me.

One thing that has been really helpful for me is promoting you. I love to promote you, and as I do so, I feel more comfortable promoting me. I see how amazing you are, I feel more sanguine about looking right at me. Why am I valuable?

When I take a minute to tell you stuff I love about you, I see that smile of yours, and I feel good. I like it when people notice to me the stuff they love about me, too. And the fact that what we are doing is appreciating each other’s unique gifts, wonderful talents, special skills, kind heart, generous spirit, loving manner, and so on, well, that dumb bushel busts up a little each time we support each other to be our best selves.

Sometimes, I think that if all of us threw off that damn bushel, the light would burn for eternity.

How’s that for a fancypants metaphor?

How have I changed from hiding and denying to owning my own significance?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10022013

Ka-Ching!

Ka-Ching!

Money is such an interesting thing. We have a thousand words for it, we have a thousand feelings about it. Can you imagine how messed up stuff would be if we had the same kind of emo-craze around electricity? Or water? Or air?

Money is energy, flowing energy. Simple, clean. But boy, oh, boy, what we do with it!

We feel all the basic emotions around money, and then we make it complicated with mislearnings and feelings about the mislearnings, and then we act on that and do weird things with our money, or for money, or against money.

Some of us act like it’s a sentient entity that’s out to get us. I’ve worked with people who realized that they saw money as their hateful, miserly grandpa, who beat them, and, although he had a lot of money, and they were cold and hungry, never helped them. Or as a cold and calculating businessman who thought money should only be spent on necessities, anything else was wasteful. Clients who saw money as a wild jock who spent spent spent on anything fun, with nothing left over for basic needs.

Wowza.

In the dark ages, money scared me so much. I saw it as the source of misery and stress. I saw money as loud and angry and violent. Certainly, that kind of energy was something I wanted to stay away from.

One of my oldest and dearest friends gave me a huge gift many years ago. I was confessing, with great shame, my horrible money secrets. He reacted with no feelings, like we were discussing a math problem. My shame and misery fell away, and money turned into energy, like electricity. Clean, pure energy, flowing in and flowing out, pooling here and there. What a transformation.

Why do I have a happy, peaceful, relationship with money? Why is my relationship with money so fruitful and fun? Why is money an expression of joy?

Choosing to enjoy our relationship with money softens up a lot of things for a lot of us. As we change the way we think of money, from power to energy, for example, or from violence to love, we will alter our relationship with the things we purchase, or sell.

Choosing to see our relationship with money as a celebration, as an endless course of gratitude-makers, as a vital and positive complement to our life, we shift our relationship with the people whom we have given financial power over us. Parents, spouses, bosses, customers, debtors, all can leave us feeling financially overwhelmed.

When we reframe our relationship with money, we can free ourselves from the feelings and negative thoughts we used put on those particular relationships. That frees up a ton of energy we can use to bring more money into our lives in positive and loving ways.

How have I changed from having an unpleasant relationship with money, to loving my financial interactions?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09182013