Unless you like yourself, you won’t like your life either…

Unless you like yourself, unless you feel good about yourself, you won’t like your life either.

Happiness is liking yourself and your life.

Not the Smokescreen…

What the smoke screen you set up hides about you… the nasty stuff… or how to learn to like yourself

There is a very important knowledge that seems to be missing for people:

Unless you like yourself, unless you feel good about yourself, you won’t like your life either.

And it is not so easy to like yourself, to feel good about yourself. Why?

Because you, internally, are well aware of the dual nature you have, and it’s disturbing.

You have two selves, the lower self and the higher self.

And whether you pretend that you are all good and loving and compassionate, or not, you are conscious that you are not all anything…

And then you do unsavory things… and then you worry, and then you think you need to change, or something has got to change… because you are not happy.

Through yourself you hate every human… except maybe a few.

You start to worry about nature, animals, become a vegetarian… all expressions of self-hate.

Instead of doing what you need to do to create an evolutionary stable strategy between your two selves… peace. Understanding. Compassion. Forgiveness. Love… Maybe even unconditional love.

You will never have one self… it is the nature of the beast… You have the self driven by the genes: the drive for survival and the drive for procreation… all the lower drives: dominate, or avoid domination, the drive to be right, and avoid being wrong… and thus be superior. To always win and avoid losing. To avoid being responsible for anything at all cost. To look good, to be well thought of, to be respectable, and keep up appearances. To compare yourself to others, to feel envy, jealousy, greed, hate, lust, to want to eat up everything in sight, to want to eat, drink, sleep… and yet be healthy, fit, slim, and beautiful.

Most of it is not useful for a human… most of it is actually counter productive: it doesn’t get you what you want.

But especially it won’t get you peace of mind, a meaningful life, harmonious relationships, and health.

Why? Because all those violate your higher self’s principles… the human values. Not just societal values, they are one thing. But values that you hold high, that you get moved by, that you want to live by.

So you are screwed… unless.

You can’t catch what you can’t see… And you can’t really catch what you are not willing to be responsible for.

And you can’t change anything you can’t accept, can’t forgive, can’t allow.

Now you are really screwed, right? Because these are all thoughts, drives, desires, urges, that you are not proud of. That you would not stand on a soap box and announce to the world.

So you avoid looking at them… like a 2-year old: if I cover my face no one can see me…

Instead of owning up to them, forgive yourself for having those emotions, feelings, urges, and act with your higher values when you can, forgive yourself when you don’t.

When I was in Landmark Education, the first 16 years of my participation I had to see a therapist ($150 a visit) to evaluate me if it was safe for Landmark Education to let me do a program or a course.

The issue was: they had to be sure that I could tell the difference between a thought and an action.

I may have a thought to kill myself, kill you, call you names… and that is one thing. But doing it is quite another.

I may have a thought: Ooh, I love cheesecake… especially when it is covered with yummy dark chocolate… bite size. But it is quite another thing to go out and buy it, or go to a party and eat it.

It’s not on my diet, and I don’t eat anything that is not on my diet.

Or I may have the thought: Oh, this is stupid… I don’t want to do it… about a course I paid for… and yet it is quite another thing to go and sleep, or quit, or ask for a refund.

But you’ll see it is possible to have the thought: I will be nice to my spouse… and it is quite another thing to behave nicely…

Or say: I’ll do three questions a week in the 67 steps coaching… and actually do it.

So, you see, this private and quite expensive “course” teaching me the difference between thought and action has proven to be very beneficial: it has created a workable foundation for a life where the two selves work together, and I can like myself, appreciate myself, respect myself, and keep myself in high esteem.

So how do you do it?

You need to make sure you take time to observe yourself with sober eyes.

Sober means: no rejoicing, no upset… just watching like an outsider. No judgment either.

You’ll notice what you’ll notice. First you won’t notice much, but eventually you can increase the number of anomalies you notice.

You want to bring the sober eye to it, and you want to give it time.

You don’t want to change anything, you don’t want to fix anything. You just want to see.

Then you want to add a little more to it: distinguish thoughts, urges, pleading, actions, attitudes.

Give it time. It is not easy to stay with the sober eyes… Still no change, no fixing, no judging.

You want to get to a place where you can see the whole picture, the drama, the counter productiveness, the being a puppet on a string, the kidding yourself, the pretense, the delusion, the hope…

At some point you want to introduce integrity… integrity with yourself.

There is no other kind of integrity… just integrity between you and you.

See it when you break it. See it when you are slimy, slinky, slippery, delusional, or “well to heck with it”.

Start enforcing some of your actions.

Don’t try to change the thoughts… just consider changing your actions.

Your thoughts are not what are running the show… You don’t need to change your mind. You don’t need to think differently. Definitely stay away from affirmations.

Just act from your values, your higher self, from integrity. And allow the thoughts to be what the thoughts are. And the emotions: ditto.

You, the higher you doesn’t bother with the thoughts and the emotions: they are all from the machine-like you.

Eventually, like me, will like yourself… And life will become fabulous.

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven