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That sinking feeling… the feeling that you don’t measure up. The feeling of impending doom. Of being found out… The fear of death…
I just read an article in the New York Times, and ended up having that sinking feeling in my stomach.
I don’t often have it myself, that sinking feeling in my stomach. but I experience it from students on the calls, so I decided to investigate.
The article was about the next 200 billion company. I had an experience of being a midget in a world of giants. I had an experience of being insignificant, nobody, a wannabe, a failure, a nothing.
In olden times this would effect me and my mood for hours, days, weeks… depression would set in. I would look at my projects and feel ashamed.
It is what you feel when your sports team loses every game. It is what you feel when you go to your high school reunion. and everyone seems to be more successful, more significant, happier than you.
That sinking feeling in your stomach.
So, what do you do with that? How do you return to well-being, how do you become a happy, successful person, like you were just moments before?
How do you shake off that horrible feeling? The feeling that you have been just declared irrelevant, not needed, not wanted, not valid, superfluous, defective, good for fodder only?
Because context is decisive, we are going to deal with the context here.
As I have said in countless articles, the context is the invisible. It is the ignored, taken for granted, undistinguished backdrop that makes, what is going on (in the foreground) mean what it seems to mean. in our case: that we are a loser.
Finding the context that is already there is like a detective job. you need to look where no one is looking. You need to ignore the obvious: those things are there to deceive you, to drive you astray.
So, what is the hidden context (inside which) you would feel miserable when you read or witness huge successes? Or even small successes…
The witness aspect of me is watching, observing.
It has no opinion, it is just watching, listening, recording, and staying neutral, not taking sides, not having an opinion.
You have that aspect too, you are just not present to it, especially when you are in the throes of misery, in the clutches of misery fighting it, instead of experiencing it. The pain, the agony, the anguish is overwhelming and all you can do is survive it… observing it with cool ‘head’ is beyond you, at least on the vibrational level that you are at now.
So, as I am observing, I find that the context has a ‘mood’ of ‘either-or’
- you either win or you lose,
- you either matter or you don’t (ever!),
- and, of course, you are either doing the right thing or you are doing the wrong thing… etc.
It is not an attitude, it is a context.
When pain or fear triggers this context, it occupies the whole background, and everything is projected on this background, as if it were a movie screen: it is indistinguishable from the movie, becomes part of it, and ‘colors’ every scene.
It makes your yesterdays when you were happy, fulfilled, and felt successful because you did something irrelevant. Or have successful children. Or having cooked a nice meal, finished a book, got a degree or any other success irrelevant.
How could that success measure in the scope of things where there is only one winner, and that is not you?
Can you feel your heart become heavy as you read it? I activated the context for you so you can feel it…
Now, let’s deactivate it and return you to a healthier context.
This is what I did: I imagined a 200 billion dollar company. Its employees are bitching, no matter what level they occupy in the organization. They complain that they have to work too much, that the company makes money while they are working for next to nothing. That the money is spent on hype instead of setting up a child care center… blah blah blah.
Can you feel as the context is clearing up? Nothing about that 200 billion dollar company is as winning as it seemed just a minute ago.
Let’s go one step further with different examples:
- the supermodel that seems to have the ideal body. She needs to take drugs. She needs to use all kinds of things, while she dreams about a life where she can eat, and be sloppy, and unrestricted, and normal.
- the internet marketing superkid hopes that no one will find out that they have to create and market a new product every week to maintain their lifestyle, and it’s getting worse by the week.
- And lastly, the ‘spiritual’ guru everyone thinks is such high vibration needs to go back to an ordinary life (like yours) and simmer down for a week or two, because their vibration is like burning a candle on both ends: not real, not from within, but she whipped it up with breathing, and drugs…
- and so on, and so forth.
You actually need to do the work of looking. Looking at people. That will do two things:
- it will remove your eyes from fixating on the ‘not’ of your life, and move it to others’ lives… half of the victory you need
- it will use comparison to return you to sanity. but this time you’ll compare real people and yourself, instead of an ‘ideal’ which is, by the way, never real.
Being normal is wonderful.
Being thrust to the top, being the best, is like they celebrate you for being 20 years old… next day you’ll have to live a lie, if you want to maintain it. Just ask any politician!
Life is like the weather: the only constant is change. Up and down, and anywhere in between. Rain and shine and cold and hot… that is the nature of life, and any resistance to Life, to what Life wants will make you miserable.
Flow with Life, enjoy the state you are in, whether it is up or whether it is down… it is all part of life, and it is all good.
Really.
PS: Of course you can use the Heaven on Earth or the Sleep Rescue . You can use them to even out your mood, and of course it will make me money too… darn. Isn’t life unfair? lol
Another example of a context that could work is that small businesses and huge businesses can be successes at the same time. That the small business doesn’t have to be like the huge business in order to be a success. And the huge business doesn’t have to be a failure in order for the small business to be a success.
In that context, the small business owner would see the things that make it a success (for example, making such a huge difference in people’s lives) instead of thinking that it doesn’t measure up.
Thanks Sophie for this article. I needed it today, you remind me to allow whatever feeling I have at this moment instead of resisting it and now I feel good…xo