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When I find an issue that a student is struggling or not dealing well with, I write an article.
The issue here, I guess, is universal.
It has two parts:
- you can’t see the big picture, the forest, for the trees. You are stuck with your ONE interpretation of facts. One of anything is dangerous! You are rigid. You have no imagination. And you have a fixed mindset. You have believed the myth of ‘is’…
- you are not good, practiced, skillful at taking advantage of the practices I have taught.
A student of mine has a daughter. The daughter decided to join the swim team. She is 13 years old. The only person who can take her to her swimming is my student.
And although it is great that the daughter wants to do something that she likes, it does take a chunk of time out of the mother’s ‘me’ time.
Me-time is the time you have singular control over… Most have none… Not like they couldn’t… They have set up life where they are NOT the captain of their ship, so everyone, each crew member can decide what the captain will do, where the ship will go.
So a good news is threatening to become a burden. Tell me if you haven’t had to deal with a similar issue… I used to be someone for whom even having a date was a burden… lol. Going out to eat was a burden.
It is human to be hard to please.
When we were little, we cried for everything. Nietzsche calls that period ‘crying for the bottle.’ We wanted what we wanted, and we didn’t want what we didn’t want.
When you were hungry, you wanted to eat… When you weren’t hungry you refused to eat.
Now, it would be normal to grow up, and in some areas of our lives we grew up… but in most areas It is the toddler who is running the show of our lives.
The toddler who is hard to please. The toddler who want what they want when they want it, and don’t want what they don’t want when they don’t want it.
We find ourselves feeling imposed upon… Feeling imposed upon allows no chance to us to enjoy our lives.
That is all we can see: THEY are trampling on our freedom! We feel restricted. We feel we have no freedom, no liberty…!
And as I have said before, your actions, your emotions follow what you see, not what you think in your mind.
But what if I told you that words, conscious words you create consciously, can change what you see.
Not affirmations: affirmations are mind stuff. Not positive thinking: that is also mind stuff. FLUFF.
Conscious words design a reality consciously. Conscious words are not lies like affirmations.
Affirmations say what you want to see… not just a different valid interpretation, a different likely story about what you see. But what you want to see is not a likely story!
Conscious words are action. They come out of the ‘truth’: that reality is collective hunch at best, and your interpretation, as long as it’s valid, is up to you.
You see, you have a fixed way of seeing what is, what was, and that fixed way has been giving you your life. You treat what you see as if that were the single true reality, but it isn’t. It is just ONE likely story. And often it is not even likely!!!
What if you could master creating thousands of interpretations, valid interpretations? Interpretations that all use the pieces of reality that are actually there?
I practiced that for years! And I got good at it.
You give up after the ‘true’ interpretation, and you are stuck… and… miserable. No accidents here!
You see, in one interpretation you are screwed, in another one, just as valid as the first one, you just got yourself a gift there is no other way to get.
Look at the picture with the dogs and the cat. Make up different interpretations, different likely stories.
The cat wanted to pet the dog but the enthusiasm carried away with the movement, and the paw, accidentally went too fast… Or as the picture says: she high-fived the dog’s face. Find more! Practice.
Without this skill you’ll be stuck forever.
In our digging sessions I always come up with different interpretations of your first incident… and yet, all of you insist that what YOU said, when you were three years old, was the truth.
Your parents said: you are worthless… Or you will never amount to anything. Or unless your behavior conforms to others’ expectations of you, you are completely screwed!
Bullshit!
I recommended the student with the daughter above, that she tries out a different interpretation: she won’t have to stay in the swimming pool herself, she can drop off her daughter, go to the nearest wi-fi hotspot, have a good old me-time for herself and pick the daughter up when the daughter is ready to leave.
In that coffee-shop she can do all the work she never has time to do at home. She can read my articles, catch up on her reading, catch up on her webinars, maybe even watch movies… movies I recommended but she never had time for.
The new interpretation makes this change in her life a GIFT instead of a burden.
And… wait for it… she can love her daughter for it, instead of staying resentful.
Do you think that will effect her entire life? You bet it will…
So, don’t be stuck with ‘the reality’ you see… ‘the reality’ you see is just one valid interpretation of the facts… the more you can make up, the happier person you’ll be.
Now, will getting activators, like the second phase activators, make this automatic?
No. What the activators will do is make it easier to make up interpretations. But the doing is still yours… Don’t kid yourself.
PS: By the way, this method is the distinction of ‘reframing‘ in psychology.
PPS: In my experience until you manage to effectively reframe the first incident, what it told you about you and about life, nothing else will matter.
I, unfortunately, was in my late 60s when I did that… So I spent most of my life reacting to that first likely story… to my detriment.
If you’d like to get a push in the right direction, I am available for a group call or for a 1-on-1… Just email me.
