More than you can stand.

Do you think that you’re emotionally healthy? Do you have moments where you strike out at others verbally or physically? It’s amazing how we’ve all been hypnotized into believing that attacking others verbally is perfectly normal and healthy.

Some of us believe that we’re doing [...]]]>

More than you can stand.

Do you think that you’re emotionally healthy?
Do you have moments where you strike out at others verbally or physically?
It’s amazing how we’ve all been hypnotized into believing that attacking others verbally is perfectly normal and healthy.

Some of us believe that we’re doing just fine, and those unpleasant moments don’t really matter.

The truth is that we all have moments when the weight of our lives threatens to crush us.
We may not think about it that way. But in a moment, something within us says, enough, and anger or bitterness comes roaring out of us.

It may be a single overwhelming moment, or a combination of dozens or hundreds of moments, reaching back through the years.

There’s no absolute standard of what’s unbearable.
Failure, criticism, and embarrassment commonly cause us pain.
Two people may encounter the same words or the same criticism, yet they experience the intensity of the pain differently. One may not even feel pain at all.

Some people bear the most difficult circumstances and people with calm, nearly untouched by events that would destroy others.
And then, there are people who find ordinary activities emotionally painful, and almost impossible to live with.

The question is, which experiences cause you pain?

And when does the pain of one experience, or the collective pain of events take you to the point where you have to do something to release that pain?

And even when released, does the pain go away?
Or does it just slide under the surface, waiting for only a drop of new pain to make it burst forth.

How Do You Try to Release Your Pain?

When the inner pain is too much, do you strike out at the most convenient target?
Or does pain leak out from you most of the time, in the guise of a bitterness that covers everything?

When we attack others, verbally or physically, it is because we are in pain.
But did that person cause the pain, or was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

And if people vary widely in their sensitivity to pain, what does it mean to cause pain?
Who is responsible for the pain? Is it the one who is unusually sensitive, and easily hurt? Or, is it the one who knew that the other person was sensitive, and still spoke in an ordinary way that causes her pain?

In a world where each person seeks to perfect herself, I look for what I can do without trying to change anyone else.

Inner growth is tied to my sense of responsibility, and what I can accomplish without blaming others. If I know what causes pain to others, and I can readily avoid being a source of pain, it’s up to me to act in the appropriate way.

And then, as someone who suffers pain, it’s up to me to be responsible for my own pain.
There is no law, no cosmic force that requires me to give over my personal power to anyone. I do not have to hand a weapon to someone and say, “Here. I give you the power to hurt me.”

I do not have to feel lasting pain, and be injured from the emotional attacks of others. The intensity of the pain is affected by the way I think about it.

And the pain can come like the stab of a thorn, and disappear, if I learn to let it go.
But we hold onto our pain like a treasure. We won’t let it go, and it circles within us, like a wound that won’t heal, drifting into and out of our awareness.

The lasting effects of those moments of pain are something that we can work on. We can learn to release that pain so it causes little injury, and then disappears completely.

Where Does the Pain Go?
What can I do to let go of all the pain within me?

Here’s the hard part.
If you have mental health issues, it’s unlikely you can face it on your own. You need help in choosing and applying the appropriate therapy.

For the rest of us, you may often need the experience and relative objectivity that a therapist provides.

When you look for a therapeutic modality, realize that there are methods that want to help you quickly release your pain, and don’t require you to swim in it.

There are many therapies that are useful here. Some like cognitive therapy help you change the way you think in the presence of pain.

Along with other methods, NLP, the Sedona Method, and the energy therapies like EFT and EmoTrance can help you change the way you relate to old pain and trauma.

What will your life be like when you finally release that old pain, so it is not awakened again and again, by everyday struggles?

These therapies can also help you change the way you relate to new situations.

You might think that we’re suggesting a solution that requires you to become cold like a stone, unfeeling and insensitive. The goal is not to eliminate your emotions, but to let them come and go, without getting stuck in endless circles of pain and attacks.

It feels sometimes like our emotions seem to get frozen within us, as though a powerful river had been dammed up, unable to flow to the sea, and it seeks temporary explosive release wherever it can find it.

The energy therapies, EmoTrance in particular, can help you learn to relate to your emotions in a whole new way – as energy, which flows, and then, is completely released.

Do You Have Enemies? In the wake of 9/11, the conversations of our leaders, our media, as well as our own private conversations, have become filled with the idea of the enemy, and often the word itself.

Unfortunately the idea of the enemy is nothing new for us. It was [...]]]> Do You Have Enemies?
In the wake of 9/11, the conversations of our leaders, our media, as well as our own private conversations, have become filled with the idea of the enemy, and often the word itself.

Unfortunately the idea of the enemy is nothing new for us.
It was 60 years between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the domestic terrorist attack of 9/11, but the time in between was not empty of war.

The United States has been in many wars throughout the years, large and small.
If war is a regular visitor to the United States, it is a resident in some countries.

The world remains full of war.
And there are no wars without enemies.

There are times when there are others who want to destroy us, others who seem deserving of the name enemy.
At other times, those who we do not understand, or who oppose us, are too readily called enemy.

Sometimes we make enemies of those who have different beliefs, languages, or skin color. In recent times, the bitterness that often colors the conversations between Democrats and Republicans has become a conversation of enemies, rather than a discussion of ideas.

It doesn’t matter what my politics are, or what your politics are.
Let’s both resist the urge to mindlessly support our own side, and say that it’s the fault of one side or the other.
Both sides are equally at fault.

There is an overwhelming bitterness that colors many discussions, on both sides of the aisle. It’s like an ancient feud between two families that is just waiting to break out into open war.

Each side just waits for an opportunity to attack the other side.

I’m sick of it, and I hope that you are too.
If enough of us refuse to support this politics of enemies, there is hope that we can get our leaders to change.

If our politicians put that energy into real work, it would be a different world.

Public and Private Enemies
As our involvement in wars rises and falls, the idea of public enemies comes in and out of our conversations. These are countries or ideologies that are said to threaten our country, way of life, etc.

And public enemies are not the only kind of enemy.

Each of us have private enemies.
Sure, we’re uncomfortable with using that word, but we think of them as enemies nonetheless.

For some of us, our enemies are those who have inflicted us with great physical or emotional pain.

When we start thinking about the enemy, hate follows along like a shadow, poisons us, and makes life bitter.

Maybe there is some purpose in forever holding hate in our hearts, directed at those who have nearly destroyed us.
But I don’t think so.

Hate does not empower us to protect what is precious in our lives from those who truly threaten us. It makes us stupid, and it darkens our hearts.

And, while there are people who truly threaten and harm us, privately, or as a country, there are many other people who we only pretend are enemies.

Enemies and Blame
We’re introduced to the idea of blame at a young age, and it’s reinforced as we grow.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as flawed, and full of conflict.
We don’t like to admit that we’ve made many mistakes.

And sometimes it’s even simpler than that.
We face a challenge, and we find that we don’t know what to do.

We don’t like to admit that we’re fallible, and imperfect, and sometimes clueless.

We don’t want to feel embarrassed.
We don’t want to return to that feeling of being a little child, with a world that’s too big for us to handle.

Rather than face our discomfort, and work hard to find a solution, we settle for an easy way out:
It’s his fault.
It’s her fault.
It’s their fault.

We pretend that the only reason that we have a problem is because of what someone else has done wrong.

We sidestep the truth.
We take a real challenge that we could work hard and grow from, and turn it into blame.

We don’t have challenges.
No, we have problems.
And those problems are someone else’s fault.

What is the truth when we find some difficulty in the midst of two sides that blame each other? Most likely, both sides have some share in causing that difficulty, and both sides probably have a role to play in finding a solution.

Enemies and Marketing
In Do You Hate Selling, I speak of Blair Warren’s One Sentence Persuasion, and five powerful ways that can be used or abused to influence people.

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.

In other posts I’ve discussed the first four methods of persuasion (see links to these articles below).

The last method is help them throw rocks at their enemies.

Politicians, and people at every level of society, often slip into the easy way of enemies and blame.
Find, or manufacture an enemy that you can share with those that you wish to influence, and attack that enemy together.

It’s frightening how effective this is.
And it’s so sad to see how hard it is for many of us to build ourselves up, without tearing other people down.

When marketers use this idea to influence or manipulate their customers, they don’t typically demonize groups of people.

Instead they talk about the forces or limitations that get in our way and stop us from getting what we want.

And they promise to help us attack those obstacles.

Of course, they want to sell us the perfect product.

Some products are wonderful, and can truly help us.
And marketers rightfully speak of common difficulties/enemies that we share.

Other products are useless, and the marketers are only manipulating us.

We’re used to thinking of unscrupulous salesmen as the most manipulative people on earth, but even the worst salesmen don’t spend their time teaching us to hate.

Certain objects seem more wondrous than others, and show up frequently in stories about magical worlds.

Take mirrors, for example. It’s strange to see yourself from the outside in. One of the reasons that it [...]]]> Mirrors
To me, the world is a magical place, full of wonder.
It’s not a belief, exactly.
It’s a feeling.

Certain objects seem more wondrous than others, and show up frequently in stories about magical worlds.

Take mirrors, for example.
It’s strange to see yourself from the outside in.
One of the reasons that it seems so strange to look at yourself in a mirror is that the mirror seems to capture you.
It seems to confine you to a tiny spot in time and space.
But inside, you still feel open and limitless, like a great ocean.

There are countless mirrors in my life, although they are not made of glass and wood and metal.
And these mirrors reflect what lies deep within me, not merely my skin and clothing.

Every experience, every possession, every person we meet shows us what lies inside of you and me.

Do you know what moves you?
Do you know what scares you, angers you, bores you, excites you?

Each us have some answers to these questions, with a mixture of truth and lies.
The way we act, and react to life’s challenges, and the way we deal with life’s quiet moments, provide a more complete answer to these questions.

As I’ve said in previous posts, our inner world is full of contradiction – conflicting desires and little “me”s, and competing stories that color everything we see.

It’s no surprise then, that the way we act is full of contradictions.
And, it’s no surprise that our experience of the world is full of contradictions.
Much of the time, our relationships with the people around us, exhibit the disorder that lies within us, that we pretend not to see.

We strike out at the mirror, not realizing that we are facing our own reflection.
If we are at war with ourselves, we will be at war with others, finding threats and danger in the world around us.

Dangers, Threats, and Challenges
I’m a typical parent. I have a strong desire to protect my children from danger.

But where are the dangers in life?
Which are real, and which are wildly exaggerated, or totally made up?

Most parents, intentionally or not, teach their children that the world is a dangerous place

• weather
• sickness
• strangers
• accidents

Fortunately, children are natural risk takers and this helps to counter the constant stream of warnings.

But only for a while.
Eventually we grow up, and many of us internalize this story of the world as a dangerous enemy.

The source of this is not simply in our thoughts and feelings.
It starts much deeper in the parts of the brain that we share with other Mammals.
Mammals have 3 hard-wired responses to danger:

• Fight: eliminate the danger
• Flight: avoid the danger
• Freeze: pretend to be dead, slow down the body to dull our experience of the pain and trauma (if we’re attacked), and flee/attack if we find a last minute chance to do so. If an animal survives such a situation, the animal has a way of releasing the experience. Unfortunately in human beings, being helpless, traumatized, frozen is not readily released when the experience is over.

(The freeze response is well documented, and has profound consequences for people who have suffered traumatic experiences. Yet, it’s unfamiliar to most people. I’ve discussed it in more detail in Getting Unstuck: Fear on Ice.)

The three responses are animal responses to real, physical danger.

Inner and Outer Dangers
What happens when we see psychological challenges, and verbal disagreements as dangers?

There are 3 common responses.

• Attack (fight): eliminate the danger
• Avoid (flight): avoid the danger
• Accommodate (give-in, give-up, ambush): we may give in to the source of the danger completely, or it may be a temporary strategy (like playing dead) which may followed by a later attack or escape from the situation

These responses are a natural consequence of the initial perception of a challenge or disagreement as a danger.

How have so many of us come to a point where every disagreement or challenge becomes a danger?

Many people have a long history of feeling unfulfilled and empty, of being disconnected from their own unique greatness, of being mentally and emotionally imprisoned in the beliefs and demands of others. We carry this burden around with us, buried beneath the surface. It takes only a small opening to release the hidden, explosive force.

For some people, sadly, just speaking to strangers can be a difficult and unpleasant experience, as every stranger becomes a danger.

A Fourth Response

If your challenges to me, and our disagreements are not a threat, what are they?

Challenges are an opportunity to change and grow.
Do you ever seek the quiet of comfortable and predictable situations and people, even though it’s a form of “sleep”?

Challenges wake us up, and give us the opportunity to rethink our priorities, and listen to our dreams. (Strange dreams, indeed, that we can only see after we awaken a little)

Challenges give us the opportunity to look at things in a new way, and create a new, more powerful way of understanding the world. We become able to see a new world of possibility, looking through the eyes of another person.

Challenges give us a moment where we can step out of the stories that we’re telling about our life, and rewrite our stories.

Sometimes challenges offer us a different opportunity.
A chance to reaffirm what is deeply important to us and say “No.”

See Power of a Positive No, by William Ury for an excellent discussion of the three responses, and an alternative which he refers to as the Positive No.

It’s strange.
Sometimes we fight with other people over nothing.
Other times, we give in, even though we betray our sense of what’s important.

It’s possible to disagree with others without attacking them.
And, it’s possible to agree with others without abandoning what is truly important to me.

A Positive No does not attack or avoid the perspective and humanity of the other person. It is a No which respects the other person, explains why my position is critical to me, and tries to find common ground which respects what is most important to each of us. And where no solution can be found, the Positive No remains a clear, solid, respectful No.

Where did these contradictory, and often limiting beliefs come [...]]]> The Meaning of Stories and Lies
In Part 1, At War With Myself, we heard that a person pretends to be of one mind and one heart, while the truth is that each of us is full of contradictions. We’re full of warring personalities and beliefs.

Where did these contradictory, and often limiting beliefs come from?
They came from our parents, friends, teachers, and others within our society.

However, people didn’t make up these beliefs and stories in a creative writing class!
Every belief, however misguided, serves some kind of purpose. The beliefs that we were taught were an attempt to make sense out of a life which is usually complex, and often overwhelming and unfathomable. The stories are used to feel safe, important, loved, and in control.

We’re all trying to make sense out of life, to find the meaning in it, and to look for a direction to go in.

We’re taught stories, or we make them up, to serve some part of ourselves. If my beliefs are full of lies and contradictions, my stories will explain my life in twisted ways. Ways that alter my perception of external reality to fit my pre-existing beliefs.

Learning from the Movies
Have you ever seen a movie, or read a book?

Sometimes these stories have a deep effect on us. Still, when the story ends, or shortly afterwards, the story is gone. It loses its hold on us, and we can replace it with another.

The stories that we tell about ourselves, our lives, and other people aren’t much different.

They’re just stories. If you see that a story takes away your power, is destructive and full of lies, let it go.

As we travel through life, we collect stories, and over time, this collection of stories is an incredible burden.

We can just let go of our burden, setting it down like a bag of heavy stones, and start to walk light and free.

What’s His Story?
Did you ever hear someone use this expression, or use it yourself?
Sometimes this expression is a way of asking “what’s up with him?” Why is he feeling or acting a certain way? What’s behind it?
Sometimes the question goes deeper. We’re looking to understand what that person is all about. What makes him tick? What drives him?

A story can be much more than a collection of facts or events.
A story is a way of connecting facts, events, and lives that explains those details, and brings out the meaning in those details:

• What are the passions?
• What are the goals?
• What are the challenges?
• What do the people in the story believe?
• Are the beliefs true or false?
• Do those beliefs enrich the lives of the people, or are they a burden
• Do your beliefs create more possibility in your life, or do they make your world smaller?

Do you tell yourself such rich stories, that ask and answer such questions? Can you build a stage in your mind and heart where such stories can be told?

You have the power to fill yourself with powerful stories that are chapters of one great, consistent story: the story of what’s truly important to you, and the greatness that you can reveal in yourself.

Childhood Stories
The first stories that we’re taught come from our parents.
These are stories that are very popular and yet extraordinarily destructive:

• The world is dangerous
• If something is unknown or unfamiliar it must be dangerous
• Profound personal change is nearly impossible
• You are powerless
• You are a victim
• Other people and external events are at fault when you fail. You must blame them to feel safe.
• If you can’t find anyone directly to blame, start blaming people who are living the life that you desire.
• If all else fails, start blaming parts of yourself: your beliefs, physical desires, emotions, etc.

Are you confused? I seem to be questioning some of your beliefs, yet it sounds like I’m saying that you shouldn’t blame your own beliefs.

There’s a difference between understanding the forces at work within you, or outside of you, and blaming them.
Blame says:

• “I can’t”
• “I’m not responsible”

The Power of Living without Blame
Do you want to change a belief that doesn’t serve you?

The first step is to just see it for what it is without blame.
Why is this so important?

Blame turns my powerful desire to reveal my greatness and create my future, into an obsession with the past and the present. Blame transforms the energy of this desire for the future, into negative, destructive emotions towards others, or negative emotions towards some part of myself. Those emotions bleed away the power of what I’ve seen and understood about my present and future.

Robert Fritz discusses a similar idea in several of his books, including Creating. Fritz writes of a power that fuels all artistic creation, and all great achievement.

What is that power?
It comes from living with the contrast or tension between current reality and the future that we want to create. This is not “I hate the present, or I hate myself, so I want to escape to the future”. It is staying focused on the future that I desire, and keeping my present situation calmly in focus so I can see clearly what I have to do to create the future.

See and feel at full strength what your life is like now, with your potential obscured by lies and stories, and what’s possible for you.

See this and you have the power to change. There will still be obstacles, but this is the beginning of your future.

Not on some distant battlefield, halfway around the world. Here, in my heart.

I don’t always notice the battle. Sometimes I don’t even feel it.

Maybe I notice a brief inner struggle while reaching for a piece of cake. Part of me wants the pleasure, while another [...]]]> The Battle Rages
I’m at war, right now.

Not on some distant battlefield, halfway around the world.
Here, in my heart.

I don’t always notice the battle.
Sometimes I don’t even feel it.

Maybe I notice a brief inner struggle while reaching for a piece of cake.
Part of me wants the pleasure, while another part of me says that it’s not good for me.

It’s like I have soldiers of different armies, with opposing goals, fighting it out within me.

Then there are the personality/emotional wars.
There’s one part of me that’s calm, thoughtful of what others need, and focused on what’s truly important in life.

Then there’s another part of me.
He’s unhappy, angry, better than everyone else.

The Many
There are too many “I”s within me to count. The physical drives within me have certain priorities. My various emotions, dreams, and thoughts have many other priorities, and push me in a wide range of directions.

Many of the personalities or character “traits” within me directly oppose some of the others.
When I’m acting tough or self-absorbed I may have disdain for the compassionate one, and when I’m in the grip of the loving personality, I may find the hateful part of myself unbearable.

There are different emotions appropriatein different situations. There are distinct situations where love, joy, hope, even anger could each be appropriate. We don’t act and feel the same way at all times. That’s not the problem.

But we often act, or feel in contradictory ways in a single situation.
And I feel for a moment that I’m lying to myself, that I’m betraying my sense of what I know is right.

The strangest thing about this collection of contradictions is that I have one name, and that I pretend to be one consistent personality.

It’s like someone started 100 songs playing at once.
Would the listener hear any of them clearly?

Built for Possibility
Why don’t we notice the contradictions and hypocrisy of our actions more clearly?
Why doesn’t this situation drive us mad, or motivate us to change?

Here’s one way to look at it:
You’re built to handle the contradictions. Your mind is capable of considering dramatically different approaches to life. Your mind is a great simulator, able to consider a dozen or a thousand approaches to a situation, and life in general.

Each program, each goal, each simulation can be set up in isolation so that we can learn from the unique insights of a particular approach, and different situations may require different behavior.

What’s the problem, then?

Let’s say that you want to send a package from New York to Chicago, an 18 hour drive.
You appoint a driver who starts to travel along a direct route for a couple of hours.

Then that driver gets tired, or hungry, or bored. He stops at a truck stop, and tosses the package at random to another driver who is sitting there. Maybe that person is going to Chicago and maybe not. The first driver may not even tell the second where the package is going. Who know where the package will end up?

There’s extraordinary possibility present in each of us. We can barely imagine the places we can go and the things that we can accomplish if we would focus on passionate goals and keep moving steadily in the direction of those goals.

Instead, we’ve taken the incredible flexibility that our mind possesses, and used it to build an inner world of warring personalities who keep switching goals, switching direction, and accomplishing relatively little.

It’s one thing to simulate different, contradictory approaches to life. It’s something entirely different to try to live multiple, contradictory lives at the same time, in one body.

When the multiple personalities in an individual consider themselves completely different, don’t pretend to be a single person, and often have different memories we call that Schizophrenia.

The difference for most of us is that our warring personalities pretend to be a single person, and don’t view themselves so distinctly. And we share all our memories.

How did we get here?
We didn’t decide to do this consciously, of course.

We’re not born knowing what to do.
We learn. We grow.

And I inevitably have goals for myself that reach far beyond who I am now.
So I have to be able to live with who I am now as I keep moving forward.

My goals don’t make the present me blameworthy or bad.

The difference between now and my future isn’t a contradiction.
It’s a gap. It’s a force that pulls me forward toward the future.

The power of that difference to move me depends on me feeling the gap.
If I pretend that there’s no gap, there’s nowhere to go.

I’ll Pretend. You pretend.
When we were children, our parents and the world around us was full of contradictions.
We were taught to believe in stories that are full of contradictions:

• You’re told that you “can’t”. You’re told that you’re not capable of doing certain things, just because your parents or your society think it’s too hard.
• You have to pretend that everything’s fine when it’s not
• You have to pretend to be in control. Pretend that you have a way to deal with everything: give in, attack, avoid
• No one’s perfect, but it’s bad to make mistakes
• When you feel that something’s not right, look for someone to blame instead of accepting responsibility to do what’s in your power to do

What happened when we were forced to pretend that lies were true?
We learned how to justify ourselves. We learned how to explain away the contradictions and to bury the feelings that arose from contradiction.

Hope
Contradictory behavior is so common around us that we’ve come to expect it.
In contrast, people we meet who have clear, powerful goals and act consistently with their goals astound us.

These are the people of great personal power in this world.
You and I can cast off our old stories and find that power for ourselves.

(Read Inner Contradictions, Part 2: The Story of You)