CDawg
05-15-2008, 08:56 AM
Hi Folks,
This is taken from the meeting notes that I compiled from a meeting a few weeks back. But as I was posting this I realized that it was a pretty good post in its own right. So I decided to put it out here as well, where more folks could see it and hopefully get as much from it as I did putting it together.
The discussion was about power - the power that we have and the power that we give to others. And the power that we give is the power to elicit from us a response to their words or actions. We all have this power within us. But it's not often that we remember to use it in its freeing form. Because we, as humans, react or respond from our emotions roughly 80% of the time, it is incumbent upon us to find ways to delay that response until we can do so from a healthier state of mind. For who among us can make a rational response in an irrational state of mind?
Most people want to be happy. They would like to feel good, avoid pain, and achieve their goals. For many, though, happiness seems to be an elusive dream. In fact, it appears that we humans are much better at disturbing and defeating ourselves! Instead of feeling good, we are more likely to worry, feel guilty and get depressed. We put ourselves down and feel shy, hurt or self-pitying. We get jealous, angry, hostile and bitter or suffer anxiety, tension and panic.
On top of feeling bad, we often act in self-destructive ways. Some strive to be perfect in everything they do. Many mess up relationships. Others worry about disapproval and let people use them as doormats. Still others compulsively gamble, smoke and overspend - or abuse alcohol, drugs and food. Some even try to end it all.
As you think, so you feel.
People feel disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.' Ancient words, from a first- century philosopher named Epictetus - but they are just as true now. Events and circumstances do not cause your reactions. They result from what you tell yourself about the things that happen. Put simply, thoughts cause feelings and behaviours. Or, more precisely, events and circumstances serve to trigger thoughts, which then create reactions. These three processes are intertwined.
The past is significant. But only in so far as it leaves you with your current attitudes and beliefs. External events - whether in the past, present, or future - cannot influence the way you feel or behave until you become aware of and begin to think about them. To fear something (or react in any other way), you have to be thinking about it. The cause is not the event - it's what you tell yourself about the event. And the things that we tell ouselves carry a great power to influence our responses. For instance, you may begin feeling bad about yourself when someone insults you, you are under a lot of pressure at work, or you are having a difficult time getting along with someone in your family. Then you begin to give yourself negative self-talk, like "I'm no good." That may make you feel so bad about yourself that you do something to hurt yourself or someone else, such as getting drunk or yelling at your children.
You may be giving yourself negative messages about yourself. Many people do. These are messages that you learned when you were young. You learned from many different sources including other children, your teachers, family members, caregivers, even from the media, and from prejudice and stigma in our society. Once you have learned them, you may have repeated these negative messages over and over to yourself, especially when you were not feeling well or when you were having a hard time. You may have come to believe them. You may have even worsened the problem by making up some negative messages or thoughts of your own. These negative thoughts or messages make you feel bad about yourself and lower your self-esteem.
Some examples of common negative messages that people repeat over and over to themselves include: "I am a jerk," "I am a loser," "I never do anything right," "No one would ever like me," I am a klutz." Most people believe these messages, no matter how untrue or unreal they are. They come up immediately in the right circumstance, for instance if you get a wrong answer you think "I am so stupid." They may include words like should, ought, or must. The messages tend to imagine the worst in everything, especially you, and they are hard to turn off or unlearn. This is the voice within our heads that comments, often critically, on everything we do. It thinks, "I did that well, people will approve of me", or "If only I had said it differently she would not have got upset". It is the voice that speculates on the future, "Should I make that telephone call...what if...?" It wonders what other people are thinking and how they will react. It is the voice of fear, the voice of the ego-mind - the part of us that believes that only through what happens to us in the world around can we be at peace within. But filling our minds with worry over what people might or might not think is not the most constructive use we can make of our imagination. Because we are often more understanding of others than we are of ourselves, I believe a sensitive person's companions to the Golden Rule ought to be "Do unto yourself as you would do unto others" or "Do unto yourself as you would have others do unto themselves."
This internal dialogue keeps us trapped in time - it dwells on the past or the future. As long as our attention is in the past or future, we are not experiencing things as they are, we are seeing them through the judgements of the past and our fears for the future. At times we can be so caught up in our self-talk that we do not even notice the present. We ignore what is going on around us, do not really hear what people are saying, do not appreciate how we really feel. So engrossed are we in our concerns that we never seem to pause to let things be. We have lost the present moment - lost the NOW.
And this is what we do to Self with the inherent power that we have to talk ourselves into actions that may or may not be healthy for us. So How do we get off of this train which takes us on a one ay ride to the Land of Negative and Unhealthy Response? For starters, identification is the key. You may think these thoughts or give yourself these negative messages so often that you are hardly aware of them. Pay attention to them. Some people say they notice more negative thinking when they are tired, sick, or dealing with a lot of stress. As you become aware of your negative thoughts, you may notice more and more of them. Your body is in the NOW. But if you're like most people, your mind is in the past or in the future. You grieve or glory over events of long ago. You harbour resentments and guilt and shame - hangovers from the past. You think of what you should have said or might have been. You fear and fantasise over the future, you worry about every moment of wasted time. You worry about death, not having enough time to achieve your ambitions, the end of your ego. All of which cuts you off from the present like a dark screen.
If you bring the mind from miles away to the activity of the moment, if you abate the clatter in your head to focus on the physical reality surrounding your body, and t he sensations from within it, you'll gradually experience a surprising sense of well-being. Indeed, tuning in to the NOW is one gateway to perceiving eternity. The philosopher Wittgenstein observed: "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, the eternal life belongs to those who live in the present". By experiencing a moment for itself, you stop time. Time is defined as the interval between two events. When you are in the NOW there is no interval, only the event alone.
The concept of the NOW has great validity when dealing with emotions and the senses. NOW is a point at which you are in touch with the ongoing process. Past and future take their bearings continuously from the present and must be related to it. Without reference to the present they become meaningless. It helps to take a closer look at your negative thought patterns to check out whether or not they are true. You may want a close friend or counselor to help you with this. When you are in a good mood and when you have a positive attitude about yourself, ask yourself the following questions about each negative thought you have noticed:
Is this message really true?
Would a person say this to another person? If not, why am I saying it to myself?
What do I get out of thinking this thought? If it makes me feel badly about myself, why not stop thinking it?
You could also ask someone else—someone who likes you and who you trust—if you should believe this thought about yourself. Often, just looking at a thought or situation in a new light helps.
The next step in this process is to develop positive statements you can say to yourself to replace these negative thoughts whenever you notice yourself thinking them. You can't think two thoughts at the same time. When you are thinking a positive thought about yourself, you can't be thinking a negative one. In developing these thoughts, use positive words like happy, peaceful, loving, enthusiastic, warm.
Avoid using negative words such as worried, frightened, upset, tired, bored, not, never, can't. Don't make a statement like "I am not going to worry any more." Instead say "I focus on the positive" or whatever feels right to you. Substitute "it would be nice if" for "should." Always use the present tense, e.g., "I am healthy, I am well, I am happy, I have a good job," as if the condition already exists. Use I, me, or your own name.
You can do this by folding a piece of paper in half the long way to make two columns. In one column write your negative thought and in the other column write a positive thought that contradicts the negative thought as shown on the next page.
You can work on changing your negative thoughts to positive ones by —
Replacing the negative thought with the positive one every time you realize you are thinking the negative thought.
repeating your positive thought over and over to yourself, out loud whenever you get a chance and even sharing them with another person if possible.
writing them over and over.
Making signs that say the positive thought, hanging them in places where you would see them often-like on your refrigerator door or on the mirror in your bathroom-and repeating the thought to yourself several times when you see it.
Negative Thought Positive Thought
I am not worth anything. I am a valuable person.
I have never accomplished anything. I have accomplished many things.
I always make mistakes. I do many things well.
I am a jerk. I am a great person.
I don't deserve a good life. I deserve to be happy and healthy.
I am stupid. I am smart.
It helps to reinforce the positive thought if you repeat if over and over to yourself when you are deeply relaxed, like when you are doing a deep-breathing or relaxation exercise, or when you are just falling asleep or waking up.
Changing the negative thoughts you have about yourself to positive ones takes time and persistence. If you use the following techniques consistently for four to six weeks, you will notice that you don't think these negative thoughts about yourself as much. If they recur at some other time, you can repeat these activities. Don't give up. You deserve to think good thoughts about yourself.
I can see where this is going to be a two-part post. In the next segment I'll talk about the power that we give to others. And all of this is taken from the notes of previous meetings, along with my own thoughts. I just wanted to condense it and put it together all under one roof as these topics are all interrelated. I hope that this is as helpful to someone else as applying these techniques has been for me.
Peace,
C
This is taken from the meeting notes that I compiled from a meeting a few weeks back. But as I was posting this I realized that it was a pretty good post in its own right. So I decided to put it out here as well, where more folks could see it and hopefully get as much from it as I did putting it together.
The discussion was about power - the power that we have and the power that we give to others. And the power that we give is the power to elicit from us a response to their words or actions. We all have this power within us. But it's not often that we remember to use it in its freeing form. Because we, as humans, react or respond from our emotions roughly 80% of the time, it is incumbent upon us to find ways to delay that response until we can do so from a healthier state of mind. For who among us can make a rational response in an irrational state of mind?
Most people want to be happy. They would like to feel good, avoid pain, and achieve their goals. For many, though, happiness seems to be an elusive dream. In fact, it appears that we humans are much better at disturbing and defeating ourselves! Instead of feeling good, we are more likely to worry, feel guilty and get depressed. We put ourselves down and feel shy, hurt or self-pitying. We get jealous, angry, hostile and bitter or suffer anxiety, tension and panic.
On top of feeling bad, we often act in self-destructive ways. Some strive to be perfect in everything they do. Many mess up relationships. Others worry about disapproval and let people use them as doormats. Still others compulsively gamble, smoke and overspend - or abuse alcohol, drugs and food. Some even try to end it all.
As you think, so you feel.
People feel disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.' Ancient words, from a first- century philosopher named Epictetus - but they are just as true now. Events and circumstances do not cause your reactions. They result from what you tell yourself about the things that happen. Put simply, thoughts cause feelings and behaviours. Or, more precisely, events and circumstances serve to trigger thoughts, which then create reactions. These three processes are intertwined.
The past is significant. But only in so far as it leaves you with your current attitudes and beliefs. External events - whether in the past, present, or future - cannot influence the way you feel or behave until you become aware of and begin to think about them. To fear something (or react in any other way), you have to be thinking about it. The cause is not the event - it's what you tell yourself about the event. And the things that we tell ouselves carry a great power to influence our responses. For instance, you may begin feeling bad about yourself when someone insults you, you are under a lot of pressure at work, or you are having a difficult time getting along with someone in your family. Then you begin to give yourself negative self-talk, like "I'm no good." That may make you feel so bad about yourself that you do something to hurt yourself or someone else, such as getting drunk or yelling at your children.
You may be giving yourself negative messages about yourself. Many people do. These are messages that you learned when you were young. You learned from many different sources including other children, your teachers, family members, caregivers, even from the media, and from prejudice and stigma in our society. Once you have learned them, you may have repeated these negative messages over and over to yourself, especially when you were not feeling well or when you were having a hard time. You may have come to believe them. You may have even worsened the problem by making up some negative messages or thoughts of your own. These negative thoughts or messages make you feel bad about yourself and lower your self-esteem.
Some examples of common negative messages that people repeat over and over to themselves include: "I am a jerk," "I am a loser," "I never do anything right," "No one would ever like me," I am a klutz." Most people believe these messages, no matter how untrue or unreal they are. They come up immediately in the right circumstance, for instance if you get a wrong answer you think "I am so stupid." They may include words like should, ought, or must. The messages tend to imagine the worst in everything, especially you, and they are hard to turn off or unlearn. This is the voice within our heads that comments, often critically, on everything we do. It thinks, "I did that well, people will approve of me", or "If only I had said it differently she would not have got upset". It is the voice that speculates on the future, "Should I make that telephone call...what if...?" It wonders what other people are thinking and how they will react. It is the voice of fear, the voice of the ego-mind - the part of us that believes that only through what happens to us in the world around can we be at peace within. But filling our minds with worry over what people might or might not think is not the most constructive use we can make of our imagination. Because we are often more understanding of others than we are of ourselves, I believe a sensitive person's companions to the Golden Rule ought to be "Do unto yourself as you would do unto others" or "Do unto yourself as you would have others do unto themselves."
This internal dialogue keeps us trapped in time - it dwells on the past or the future. As long as our attention is in the past or future, we are not experiencing things as they are, we are seeing them through the judgements of the past and our fears for the future. At times we can be so caught up in our self-talk that we do not even notice the present. We ignore what is going on around us, do not really hear what people are saying, do not appreciate how we really feel. So engrossed are we in our concerns that we never seem to pause to let things be. We have lost the present moment - lost the NOW.
And this is what we do to Self with the inherent power that we have to talk ourselves into actions that may or may not be healthy for us. So How do we get off of this train which takes us on a one ay ride to the Land of Negative and Unhealthy Response? For starters, identification is the key. You may think these thoughts or give yourself these negative messages so often that you are hardly aware of them. Pay attention to them. Some people say they notice more negative thinking when they are tired, sick, or dealing with a lot of stress. As you become aware of your negative thoughts, you may notice more and more of them. Your body is in the NOW. But if you're like most people, your mind is in the past or in the future. You grieve or glory over events of long ago. You harbour resentments and guilt and shame - hangovers from the past. You think of what you should have said or might have been. You fear and fantasise over the future, you worry about every moment of wasted time. You worry about death, not having enough time to achieve your ambitions, the end of your ego. All of which cuts you off from the present like a dark screen.
If you bring the mind from miles away to the activity of the moment, if you abate the clatter in your head to focus on the physical reality surrounding your body, and t he sensations from within it, you'll gradually experience a surprising sense of well-being. Indeed, tuning in to the NOW is one gateway to perceiving eternity. The philosopher Wittgenstein observed: "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, the eternal life belongs to those who live in the present". By experiencing a moment for itself, you stop time. Time is defined as the interval between two events. When you are in the NOW there is no interval, only the event alone.
The concept of the NOW has great validity when dealing with emotions and the senses. NOW is a point at which you are in touch with the ongoing process. Past and future take their bearings continuously from the present and must be related to it. Without reference to the present they become meaningless. It helps to take a closer look at your negative thought patterns to check out whether or not they are true. You may want a close friend or counselor to help you with this. When you are in a good mood and when you have a positive attitude about yourself, ask yourself the following questions about each negative thought you have noticed:
Is this message really true?
Would a person say this to another person? If not, why am I saying it to myself?
What do I get out of thinking this thought? If it makes me feel badly about myself, why not stop thinking it?
You could also ask someone else—someone who likes you and who you trust—if you should believe this thought about yourself. Often, just looking at a thought or situation in a new light helps.
The next step in this process is to develop positive statements you can say to yourself to replace these negative thoughts whenever you notice yourself thinking them. You can't think two thoughts at the same time. When you are thinking a positive thought about yourself, you can't be thinking a negative one. In developing these thoughts, use positive words like happy, peaceful, loving, enthusiastic, warm.
Avoid using negative words such as worried, frightened, upset, tired, bored, not, never, can't. Don't make a statement like "I am not going to worry any more." Instead say "I focus on the positive" or whatever feels right to you. Substitute "it would be nice if" for "should." Always use the present tense, e.g., "I am healthy, I am well, I am happy, I have a good job," as if the condition already exists. Use I, me, or your own name.
You can do this by folding a piece of paper in half the long way to make two columns. In one column write your negative thought and in the other column write a positive thought that contradicts the negative thought as shown on the next page.
You can work on changing your negative thoughts to positive ones by —
Replacing the negative thought with the positive one every time you realize you are thinking the negative thought.
repeating your positive thought over and over to yourself, out loud whenever you get a chance and even sharing them with another person if possible.
writing them over and over.
Making signs that say the positive thought, hanging them in places where you would see them often-like on your refrigerator door or on the mirror in your bathroom-and repeating the thought to yourself several times when you see it.
Negative Thought Positive Thought
I am not worth anything. I am a valuable person.
I have never accomplished anything. I have accomplished many things.
I always make mistakes. I do many things well.
I am a jerk. I am a great person.
I don't deserve a good life. I deserve to be happy and healthy.
I am stupid. I am smart.
It helps to reinforce the positive thought if you repeat if over and over to yourself when you are deeply relaxed, like when you are doing a deep-breathing or relaxation exercise, or when you are just falling asleep or waking up.
Changing the negative thoughts you have about yourself to positive ones takes time and persistence. If you use the following techniques consistently for four to six weeks, you will notice that you don't think these negative thoughts about yourself as much. If they recur at some other time, you can repeat these activities. Don't give up. You deserve to think good thoughts about yourself.
I can see where this is going to be a two-part post. In the next segment I'll talk about the power that we give to others. And all of this is taken from the notes of previous meetings, along with my own thoughts. I just wanted to condense it and put it together all under one roof as these topics are all interrelated. I hope that this is as helpful to someone else as applying these techniques has been for me.
Peace,
C