SunAgape's Spot: mislearning

Showing posts with label mislearning. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Doubt Into Trust

When most of us think about trusting we are thinking about trusting other people. We hardly ever think about trusting ourselves.

What happens when we doubt ourselves? For some of us, we doubt our ability to be loved. We have mislearned that we are unlovable, that we are so fatally flawed that no decent person could love us, even if they really do, and we often find ourselves choosing people who treat us poorly, reinforcing our mislearned ideas of being lovable.

For some of us, we doubt our gifts, talents, and skills. Each of us has them but when we doubt them, we often forego opportunities to hone them, to refine and improve them. Perhaps we hide them at home, secretly indulging in our art or music or intellect or cooking or other wonderful things. We avoid taking chances that might make our skills and talents stronger. We fear that we aren’t actually very good at X, or we know we are, but fear not being good enough. Perhaps we fear being mocked or ridiculed. Perhaps we doubt that we have the internal resources we need to handle the attendant stuff, like acclaim, or responsibility, or money, or attention if we were to let our light shine.

Why can I trust? How do I know I can trust me? What makes me choose to believe in my own self?

As I go through my day, I choose to be aware. I choose to notice what I am doing, how I am doing it. I look for ways that I am sabotaging myself. When I spot one, I correct as best I can.

Our personal doubt is our first chunk of mislearning. We all have one; the worst thing we believe about ourselves. Mine is that I am garbage. As I have worked on this one, I have cycled through many Creative Questions. My current faves are, “Why am I strong? Why am I capable? Why am I competent?” Oh, yeah! Working on our personal doubt can bring up all sorts of interesting stuff; damaging beliefs, toxic thoughts, negative behaviors, and other ickies. Trusting ourselves, choosing to believe that we are worth the effort, that we are capable of doing what we need to do, that we can find good teachers to coach us in our endeavors, these are things that make our lives a million times nicer.

As I come to trust myself, I will change. We all change, even when we like to think we don’t. As I come to trust myself, I will make better decisions, ones that support me better. Some of the people in our lives may not like what we are doing, and may choose to leave. Since part of my personal doubt involved feeling like a victim, I am happy to see victimizers leave, even if I grieve the end of the relationship. As we clean up our act, the people whose damage dovetails with ours have to leave or change. Our relationships are like a big mobile; when one piece gets lighter, everything else has to adjust.

One of the benefits of trusting myself more is that my judgment gets better. I find that I am not only trusting me more, but I am trusting the people who want to hurt me less, and the people who want to support me more. I feel safer, I feel more connected, I feel softer, I feel stronger. I am happier. The more I trust me, the more trustworthy I become.

How have I changed from dissing myself to honoring myself with my own trust?

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Lush and Lavish

Hanging out on the porch one day last week, my friend and I were listing all the mundane things that make our lives lovely. How fun! I had been thinking about the notion of feeling like one is living in the wrong time. While this desire isn’t one of mine, I have known many people who feel this way. I guess it’s because if I had been born even ten years earlier, I would have died when I was three. And again when I was ten. And again in my 50s.

I joke a lot about living in the future. I say that because my inner ten-year-old remembers vividly discussing with a good friend what we thought things would be like in the 2000s. The whole bad idea of flying cars aside, we talked about communicator devices, teleporting, and fashions, and travel to the stars. I think about how exciting it was to imagine being in my 50s. I was so right! I remember thinking that I would live in luxury. I sure feel that way now. Thank you, prophetic former self!

How do I feel when I feel that I live in luxury? Why is my life so luxurious? What makes me notice my luxuries?

When I decided to give up my poverty mentality I had a lot of work to do. I had to really pay attention to what I was saying, to what I was thinking. For example, I often caught myself saying, “I can’t afford it.” The feeling I had when I said that was icky. I felt deprived, or undeserving, or I was lying and used that line instead of saying, “No thanks, I don’t want to,” which was more often than not what I actually meant.

I used to think I couldn’t afford nice clothes and shoes, for example. I did a lot of shopping for my stuff at cut-rate stores and felt frumpy and frowzy. I felt like I couldn’t afford wholesome food, so I ate processed stuff, and cheap snacks full of ingredients. I felt crummy but believed that I couldn’t afford to go to a gym, or take classes, or go out with my friends. I had the idea that I couldn’t make a good living, that somehow I couldn’t really take care of myself.

Poor little me!

Everyone learns to view the world through mental filters. We have to. The sheer volume of information we are exposed to would leave us completely overwhelmed. So we filter. And we filter. And we learn to filter for certain things, like the kind of people we are attracted to, like the way we view ourselves, like a poverty mentality. Many of these filters we acquire as very little children, and many of them are just plain wrong. I call that “mislearning.”

One of our tasks in life is to grow up. Not just to get older, but to mature, to eliminate our immature or childish thoughts and behaviors and to replace them with adult behaviors. It’s one thing to have a temper tantrum when we are 3, but another thing altogether when, as a fifty year old we are still giving people the silent treatment, or shouting at them, especially when we have the same fights over and over.

Shedding our poverty mentality is similar. Learning to notice when we get that lack-feeling and then immediately addressing it with a good Creative Question will go a long way toward turning poverty mind into luxury mind. Practicing gratitude and appreciation will also bring us a sense of the magnificent abundance in our lives.

How have I changed from feeling want to reveling in my abundance of luxury?

Friday, June 19, 2015

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?

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Inalienable rights granted to us by our Higher Power. How many of us live our lives like that? How many of us consider what those things mean? How many of us plod through our days, vaguely dissatisfied, suffering, and imprisoned in our own minds?

Life. This right isn’t about simply existing, it’s about being alive, experiencing our lives fully in each moment to the best of our ability. Using our senses to see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and consider the moment. This moment is it. It’s always just this moment. Will we squander it by dwelling in the past, or fretting about the future? Will we waste it by judging it to be wanting in some way? How would your life be if you considered each moment perfect for where you are right now?

How do I feel when I feel alive? Why can I feel alive? What makes me enjoy living?

Liberty. What if liberty weren’t just about free speech and freedom to practice the religion of my choice, freedom to live where I want, freedom to vote, and so many other things we hear about, but rather, what if liberty were freedom from noxious beliefs, unsupportive habits, self-loathing, mistrust, isolation, suffering, and so on. What if that is what we are meant to be pursuing? What if supportive habits and beliefs, self-love and care, trust, connection, joy, and bliss were available to us all? How freeing! How much energy we would have to live our lives in ways that matter deeply to us, not from a sense of obligation or duty, but from joy and connection!

How am I free? What makes me feel liberated? How am I untethered?

Happiness. As a kid, I thought this was about houses and cars and prestige jobs. I knew artists and musicians and writers who were living their passions, but none of them was happy. Most of the ones I knew drank too much, were angry and resentful and felt like the world owed them something. I know, nice crowd! What if that happiness were just waiting inside for us to stumble upon it? What if happiness were something that we got by being present in the moment, by liberating ourselves from limiting thoughts and behaviors, and was simply there, inside us, just for the taking?

Why am I happy? How could I be happy? What makes me own my bliss?

Who am I surrounded by? Do I seek out others who want to live their natural lives of satisfaction and peace? Or do I hang out with grumps who find treasure and complain that it’s heavy, or who pour their energy and attention into pain and misery, judging everyone as lacking, or better than they are?

I have sat on my porch, in blissful peace, surrounded by the birdies, the plants, the fresh air, my beloved friends, but I have also found peaceful joy in the hospital with tubes coming out of mentionable and unmentionable places, with life-changing circumstances and physical discomfort. My happiness is not dependent on outside stuff anymore. I appreciate the outside stuff, but that’s not where my bliss is. It has taken daily practice. And even more important that practice, I had to admit that I was wrong about the world, about my life, about you. I had to choose Life, Liberty, and Happiness. Are you ready?

How have I changed from feeling dead, trapped, and miserable to enjoying my gloriously free and happy life?

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Call Me Good Enough

The last few months have been very interesting for me. Learning to work with Edgar, my ostomy, learning to work around chemo, learning to prioritize ferociously, learning to respond to the physical needs of my body, and taking care of my spirit, each of these has been a course in amazing.

Why am I competent? Why am I strong? What makes me capable?

The card I got today is the “Why am I good enough?” card. I realized that through all the unusual events of late I have never asked the question, “Why me?”

When I choose to believe that I am good enough, I can go with the flow. When I go with the flow, I can let go feeling like a victim. “Why me?” and “How did this happen to me?” aren’t useful questions in these circumstances..

When I choose to believe that I am good enough, I can ask for help easily. I can find the joy in each day because I don’t feel like my physical discomfort gets in the way of my spirit. I can do what I can do, and let the rest go for today, and call it good enough.

When I choose to believe that I am good enough, I can feel physically crappy, and emotionally happy because I don’t need to put judgments on my physical sensations.

Huh. That one blew me away.

I mislearned that if I feel physically bad, I have to sound like it. I have to put a certain painful twang into my voice so you know how martyred I am by my body. Why is that? Won’t you believe me if I don’t sound like I’m suffering? Maybe I won’t believe me if I don’t sound like I’m suffering. What I do know is that I am supporting me in feeling bad when I put on that voice.

Is that what I want?

Sometimes we support ourselves in things that make us feel bad because we get something else out of it. This “else” is called secondary gains, and, oh, that one was a bite of bitter for me. Like choosing to be in abusive relationships so you would want to rescue me. Or choosing to feel sick so I could stay home from my bad jobs.Or choosing to be incompetent so you would take care of me. Or staying poor so I could feel noble. I’m serious! Oy!

How do I know I am good enough? Why am I worthy? What makes me feel clear?

Choosing to feel good enough, choosing to like me and accept me as I am gives me so much freedom.

Does that sound funny to you, choosing to feel good enough? It’s a choice we make, mostly unconsciously, all day long. Or not. It’s a choice, like what cereal to have for breakfast, or whether to acknowledge the nasty email from the ex.

How have I changed from supporting my feeling-bad self to choosing to feel good enough?

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Life in Miseriopolis

Back when I lived in Miseriopolis, I used to think people were jerks. In general, of course, but also because they didn’t seem to want to listen to me go on about my misery; my angst, my pain, my suffering, how hard my life was, how I was disrespected, blah blah blah. I felt discounted, I felt like my feelings weren’t being validated. That was all about you, you see, and how you lacked in compassion for me.

I am so sorry. I didn’t know.

I had a great deal of mislearning about how to be an adult. I won’t go so far as to say everything I knew about being an adult was a mislearning, but I am a bit tempted.

One great mislearning was that misery was my birthright. I was entitled to feel miserable, with all its attendant benefits, like being able to bow out of things I had agreed to, but didn’t wanna do, by being sick with a migraine or back pain. Who could argue with that? Was I miserable because I was sick, or was I sick because I was miserable?

Another great mislearning was that my misery was somehow your fault. That meant that all my interactions with you had a dash of bitterness and resentment attached. How charming. It’s why I felt okay about being snarky and sarcastic with you. You deserved it for making me suffer. Somehow.

Another great mislearning was that “this is just the way things are.” What a cop out. There is a huge difference between accepting what is and flowing with life, and becoming resigned to X. Flowing with life gives us room for peace, and joy, and bliss. Resignation is not joyful, or peaceful. It’s all full of rust and dust and bitter gall.

Ask many people who have gone from misery to joy how they did it, and most of them will say, “I realized it was a choice.”

Why am I a leader? What makes me positive? How am I uplifting?

Someone will always lead. May as well be us. We set examples all the time, may as well lead by them. We have choices to make a thousand times a day. May as well choose up.

One of the secrets about this attitude stuff is that cheery has a lot more energy than miserable. Miserable takes up loads of energy. We are meant to be uplifted, that makes us feel light, light is high-efficiency. Misery is down and dark. Dark takes up a lot of juice, it is very low-efficiency. That’s part of why we wanna just stay in bed when we feel down.

One of the secrets about this attitude stuff is that my feelings are my responsibility. I know it seems like Joe Blow makes me mad, or scared, or sad, but it’s me acting as his proxy. I am responsible for my feelings. I finally got it one morning when my little fur family was making me crazy. I was ranting at them, and suddenly realized that they were doing what they do every day, it was only my reaction that was different.

Unchoosing misery, choosing uplifted, is one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves, and subsequently for our families, our communities, and on and on.

How have I changed from being entitled to my misery to choosing to lighten up?

Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 10082014

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Finding Teachers

One of the things that blows me out of the water is how full our lives are of teachers. We have teachers who teach us in school or formal classes. They teach us knowledge-y things like math and languages and science stuff, and they often give us tests. Some of them teach us fun stuff like music and art and cooking, and the proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes.

We have teachers who are parents or other adults we are close to who teach us useful skills to help us in life; how to express our feelings, how to iron, how to forgive, or wash dishes so they are clean, how to jury rig stuff, or take care of ourselves when we are sick, or how to be generous. Sometimes those teaching are really helpful, and sometimes they can really mess us up.

When we go to work we get new teachers who show us the ropes, sometimes they are our supervisors or bosses, sometimes they are co-workers. We sometimes find spiritual teachers at our places of worship, and sometimes we run into what I often refer to as our “best teachers” who drive us crazy but also give us the space we need to really grow into ourselves, to let go of being a victim, or to see our parents or other adults from our childhoods as just people, and not demigods.

When we are looking for a good teacher, the universe will usually provide us with someone. Thing is, we may not recognize them as a teacher. Maybe they are a lot younger than we are. Maybe they are of a different lifestyle, or education, or something else that makes us think we can write them off. We miss a lot that way.

How am I supported? What makes me recognize a teacher? How do I open to learn something new?

Often we get ourselves in trouble by feeling like we are better than, that we know more than so and so, that there isn’t anything they can teach us. Sometimes we get ourselves in trouble by thinking that we we can’t learn, we can’t change, we are just stuck in this miserable mess we’ve created for ourselves.

We can always learn. We can always find something inside that we need to let go of; an old resentment, a mislearned belief, an attitude that doesn’t serve us. We occasionally know what these things are, but often we don’t, and a teacher will help us get there.

How do I know I can change for the better? What makes me courageous? Why am I strong? Why am I competent?

When I listen to me and hear things like, “I always, I never, I can’t, that’s just how I am, this is just how it is” chances are good I have some stuff there that I can let go of. If I choose to believe that I am meant to be happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy, there is a lot of room for me to grow. It may just be a matter of changing my point of view. It may be a matter of counting things differently, or reframing an old idea into a fresh belief.

By keeping my eyes peeled for my teachers, wherever I may find them, I open my heart to being my best self. I am not grateful for the tumor, but I am grateful for what I am learning from the healing of my body. I am not grateful for the discomfort, but I appreciate the skills I am acquiring without drama, the flood of good will and kindness, and my willingness to change my ideas about my experience from things that bring me down to things that uplift me and leave me lighthearted. I will take them where I find them.

How have I changed from feeling stuck to opening to a world full of good teachers?

Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 09252014

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Looking at the Onion

I talk about unconscious material here fairly often. You know, the stuff that is buried deep in our minds. We react to it. It directs a lot of our behavior. It makes decisions for us. They are often not very good decisions because they are born from our mislearning. And then we wonder what the heck happened.

Part of coming to know ourselves is being willing to look at our unconscious stuff. Many of us try to avoid it. We are afraid that we will uncover stuff that might wreck our relationships. We are afraid that we find things we don’t like about ourselves. We are afraid that we will unearth terrible secrets. Or that we will find out that we have to make a change we think is too scary.

One way to tell what is going on in our unconscious minds is to look at our circumstances. Our situations can let us know what creative questions we are asking unconsciously.

Do my days feel effortful or effortless? Do my days feel easy or challenging? Do I feel peaceful? Do I relax?

Why am I alive? What makes me choose? How do I feel when I feel alive?

Sometimes, we have a situation that feels overwhelming. We feel like we can’t solve the problem, so we push it deep down into our unconscious and start asking bad creative questions, like, How can I avoid dealing with this problem?

Uh, oh.

We are wildly, wonderfully creative beings, and we will come up with amazing ideas for avoiding stuff. We get busy, we get pregnant, we have affairs, we get in trouble at school or work, or with the law, we have a bad accident, we get sick, and if it feels really big, we might just die.

Maybe we get obsessive about work, or housekeeping, or exercising, shopping, or glamorizing. running errands, taking on commitments, volunteering, extra jobs, well, you get the idea.

If we discover that we are doing some of these big avoidance things, we can start to look for our big topic. We may get caught up in details, the trivia of the situation. I can usually tell that I am doing this if I am feeling like there is a lot of drama going on around me, that I am all caught up in it. And this may well brings my buried situation to a head, so I have to take a look at it.

Why would I let go? How am I peaceful? What makes me notice?

When I let go of the drama, when I choose to breathe softly into the situation, I can often see what is going on under the frothy excitement. Frequently, it will have to do with my personal doubt, that first piece of mislearning I took on when I was very little. In fact, the more I deal with my stuff, the more I will need to look at this piece, to integrate the experiences that support that mislearning.

It’s like the onion analogy, where we peel away a bit, and peel away some more, and some more. It may be a process, but it is often the best way to clean up our stuff. When I choose to look at my unconscious stuff, and for me, getting help makes this much easier, I am way more efficient. I am choosing to be alive, to live as fully as I can, and enjoy my life effortlessly.

How have I changed from hiding from my own mislearnings to choosing to live fully?

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

You Ol' Sofite

You Ol’ Softie

We all have stuff, big stuff, little stuff, stuff. We have current topics, we have history. We have old, well-established patterns that are so ingrained in us we don’t even notice them. We may even think that everyone feels like we do.

One of the ways we can uncover our hidden patterns is by talking with other people.

Why am I intimate? What makes me feel close? How do I connect?

As we talk about ourselves, as we disclose our thoughts, our feelings and beliefs, our loved ones may question what we believe. They may give us opportunities to question our ideas about how the world works. They may help us find ways to think about relationships, about people, about our own histories, that make way for us to feel more comfortable, happier, and to get along better.

Sometimes the stuff that comes up as we talk is scary or painful. Integrating these memories is one of the ways that we grow. As we address these topics, we develop resiliency. Our self-esteem grows stronger as we see what we have survived. We find our sense of personal power as we are able to let the past go, break those old, destructive patterns, and replace our mislearnings with wisdom, understanding, compassion, and self-respect. I needed a lot of help to do this, and I found that each time I needed a wonderful teacher, a wonderful teacher showed up.

Why do I like me? How do I know I am strong? Why do I choose to be vulnerable?

Choosing to be vulnerable is an interesting thing. I used to say that being vulnerable was like giving someone a pointy stick and telling them where to poke you to hurt the most. When I had friends who didn’t really like me, I would open up, and they would poke. Owie. I felt justified in thinking that people were basically cruel and self-serving.

I am so glad I was wrong about that.

I have had to leave a lot of relationships over the years for a lot of reasons. I have made a lot of new friendships with lovely people, who listen carefully when I tell them where to poke, then say, “You can keep that pointy stick, I don’t want it.” They treat me kindly, compassionately, and don’t poke.

When I am vulnerable with untrustworthy people I can get zapped. There are lots of trustworthy people out there, and one of the things we get to do is find them, and trust them.

When I find my trustworthy people, I don’t have to trust all at once. I don’t have to scare myself. I can take baby steps, and trust on my own timeline. I can practice trusting. Well, that’s what I did, anyway. Making that effort is worth it.

When I trust my trustworthy people, I can choose to be vulnerable with them. I can choose to disclose, I can choose to be soft, I can choose to be comforted. I can choose to receive help, and compassion, and let their love into my heart. As I do this, learning to receive, I can also choose to feel gratitude, and appreciation. I can choose to notice how nice my life is. I like that.

How have I changed from feeling distant and shut down to opening up to intimacy?

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Doom or Bloom?

Helpless, hopeless, doomed. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever goes my way. Everything happens to me. My misery is all your fault.

Huh.

Some of us feel like this. I was one of them. I couldn’t leave my rotten job for a hundred reasons. I couldn’t leave my rotten living situation for a thousand reasons. I couldn’t leave my abusive relationship for a hundred thousand reasons. Most of them were your fault. And then, when I got fired, or evicted, or dumped, well, that was clearly your fault, too.

Please accept my apologies. I had a powerful heap o’ mislearning I needed to dump.

Can’t is a crazy word. Can’t stops us cold, tenses our muscles, cramps our thoughts, constrains our behavior. When I choose can’t, I stifle myself. I curb my enthusiasm, I cage my heart, I chain my mind. When I choose can’t, I don’t grow.

Why am I capable? What makes me choose?

I drew those two cards this morning. When I throw in “Why am I competent?” and “Why am I strong?” I can unchoose victim/martyr. I can choose to accept the circumstances I find myself in. I can choose to do what I can to change them. I can choose to get some help. I can choose to leave.

I can choose to accept you as you are, and stop fighting to make you be different. I can choose to take responsibility for my well being and walk away from our relationship if I need to.

When I approach the world from a place of resourcefulness, where I believe all the support I need is there for the asking, I feel powerful. In the olden days, I believed I was powerless to impact my life, except sometimes with a tantrum. I learned that when I was very small, and it was pretty true then, but I got older, and bigger, and it became less accurate, and a deeper mislearning.

Why can I relax? What makes me peaceful? Why can I decide?

Every so often, something would happen to shake that belief, until I finally noticed that I actually did have some power of choice. I began to seek out good teachers, I began to leave “friends” who encouraged me to stay small and helpless. I started to notice my really bad habits that left me feeling awful, like abusing recreational chemicals, and got help to replace them with habits that showed me new ways to think.

I didn’t change this overnight. I did take baby steps. One little change here, one little change there. Some of them took right away, some I had to revisit again and again. Some I am still revisiting. The habit of being competent, of feeling capable, of knowing I can, has gotten stronger. The habit of taking responsibility for my own well being is stronger, and easy most of the time.

Each of us is the only one who can change our own internal experience. Each of us has all the resources we need available. We just need to learn how to ask.

How have I changed from being wedded to “can’t” to feeling the power of “I can?”

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Choosing the Doing

Two cards popped this morning. Why do I like what I do? Why am I celebrated?

Well, that’s certainly a powerful set o’ Questions, isn’t it!

These are relatively new experiences for me. I know you aren’t surprised to hear that. Of course, I had things I liked to do, but they weren’t my occupation. I often hated what I was doing, even when I got my dream jobs.

We get ideas about how things go. We learn as small children by watching our adults. We learn that work is satisfying, or contemptible. We learn that we have to work jobs we hate, or we get to work jobs we love. We learn that co-workers are an important part of our emotional life, or that they are a burden to be carried and suffered. We are, for the most part, unaware of these made-up rules of employment, but we find that every job we go to has the same set up. Fancy that.

These notions, arbitrary, based on observation by our baby minds, turn into fixed delusions. And because they are delusions, as we do our daily lives, we don’t even see that they are just made up ideas.

One of the things I learned in High School was about doing critiques. All a critique is, is coming up with a line of bullshit and finding stuff to support it. Useful, cynical. And that’s what a fixed delusion is, a pile of made-up stuff that we then spend a lifetime finding stuff to support. We actually live a lot of our lives doing that. It’s the filtering thing.

We have to filter in order to function in the world. There is simply too much information available at any given time.

What makes me decide? How do I choose? Why can I slow down?

When I give myself permission to slow down, to start to notice what my patterns are, to consider the notion of fixed delusions, I begin to choose freedom.

How do I feel when I am free? Why can I decide? How do I find solutions?

When I notice that my ideas about work match the ideas one of my adults from my childhood expressed, and they weren’t good, I have a little wiggle room. When I see how my notions about relationships with co-workers do the same thing, I have a bit more wiggle room. I also have an arsenal. I have free will that can I exercise. I can unchoose the mislearnings of my past. I have Creative Questions.

Why do I like what I do? How do I know my efforts have value? Why do I enjoy my work environment? What makes me appreciated?

By taking responsibility for the quality of my work life, I have a sense of control. I know I get to choose my attitude. I understand that when I’m being pissy at work, I’m operating from a fixed delusion. I get to change that, and I know that making that shift will make things better for me, and for you, my co-worker, which is how I am responsible to you.

How have I changed from hating my job to loving what I do?

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Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Living Hard to Living Easy

“Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” I love that saying. I like it even better when I remember it appropriately.

One of my favorite goals is for easy. Easy, effortless, smooth. I have times like this, many more than I used to. I imagine that I will continue to have more and more.

One of the ways I have easy is by remembering that your topics, generally speaking, are not my topics. Sure wasn’t the case back when. Back when, I made your stuff waaay more important than mine, or me. I believed that I was responsible for your happiness, your comfort, and the fact that you were so unhappy was all my fault. I thought your bad behavior was my fault. Everything was my fault.

I’m serious. I know it sounds nuts, but that’s what I thought. And I wondered, way deep down, why you didn’t feel like that about me. I thought that was love.

I would wake up in the middle of the night worried about you. I could get so overwrought about your well-being that I would cry for ages. I thought that was love.

I would drop everything if I thought you might need me. Being needed was hugely important to me, all my self-esteem sat there. I mixed up being needed and being loved.

I believed that you would stop abusing me when X happened. That X changed a lot depending on how things were going. I believed that if I held you blameless enough, if I treated you well enough, If I forgave you enough, you would stop. I thought that was love.

That was not easy. It was also a great big pile of mislearning. The nice thing is that we can walk away from a great big pile of mislearning like that and it will eventually fade away. I will also tell you that I got a lot of help unchoosing that mislearning.

Why can I relax? What makes things go my way? Why is it just so easy? How is my life effortless?

When I understand that I am responsible for me, and to you, things get easy. When I understand that I cannot make you do anything, and you cannot make me do anything, things get easy. When I understand that I filter my world based on my beliefs, and that I can change my beliefs, things get easy.

Back when, I had people say, “Wow, you sure live hard.” I thought it was a compliment. Now, I like easy. Easy is fundamental to our natural lives, right along with relaxed, peaceful, satisfied, content, blissful, creative, and connected. Easy is inside me. Easy is inside you, too. It’s just all covered up with old beliefs, outdated notions, expired ideas, that need to be cleaned up.

Why can I let go? What makes me surrender? Why do I trust life?

As I choose to become a grownup, I choose to let go of all that old, useless stuff. I choose to take responsibility for my own well being, and be responsible to you. I choose to let go of worrying about how stuff will turn out, and trust that I will manage well. I choose to relax. I choose to go to peace. I choose easy.

How have I changed from choosing hard to choosing easy?