“What we have here is a failure to communicate”…….so goes the most famous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke.
Communication should be simple, right? Perhaps if we are thinking of the communication of simple facts, but when it comes to emotions and aspects of a personal relationship, communication is in fact extremely difficult.
When humans develop an intimate relationship they never consider how difficult communication really is. Most of us expect our communication system to be easy, uncomplicated and rarely misunderstood. In reality, good communication is a skill the majority of people never acquire. And then, we wonder why other people misunderstand us so often.
In my experience listening to couples attempting to communicate with each other in couples therapy, the number one reason people misunderstand each other is because of what therapists call ‘projection’.
Simply stated, projection is the taking of our own attitudes and feelings, view points and emotions and believing because that is how we feel then other people we are communicating with will feel the same way. In other words, we unconsciously assume everyone sees the world just as we do.
Not so. We are all unique and none of us has the same experiences as anyone else. This requires we understand that everyone we talk with does not think and feel what we do, that in fact taking our thoughts and helping another understand them is very complicated and often misunderstood.
The largest arena I see this dysfunction is in the belief that our partner is criticizing us, when they are not. What happens is we are actually critical of ourselves and assume because we are critical of ourselves, so are other people, especially loved ones. We then attack these people for feeling the way we feel ourselves about ourselves.
Now that is a mouthful. But let me give an example. Perhaps you have poor self esteem. Meaning, you do not value yourself accurately, but have negative images of yourself. Because you feel this way about yourself, you will often read other people as feeling the same way about you, when in reality they do not. But because we are so invested in believing others view us negatively, we assume the worst when in reality we ourselves feel badly about ourselves and assume everyone else does as well.
This continually occurs in therapy. People believe their partner sees them in a negative light, when if checked out by an impartial therapist, we find their partner does not believe what they negatively believe about themselves. It takes much time and is slow hard work to correct these misconceptions. But in truth many couples project their own negative feeling about themselves onto their partner and believe they are hostile towards them, when in truth it is our own thinking we are doing battle with.
The only way out of projection is to ask and then believe what your partner really feels about you. Just because you feel negatively about yourself, does not mean they do as well. However, the game of projection is so powerful it takes many sessions to correct these misconceptions. And it can only be done if you analysis what you feel about yourself, and then checking out with your partner what they really feel about you.
This is not easy work. Thus many couples fight about issues that are not real; they are projections from one party onto their partner. Once you see how this works in human relationships, you can begin by questioning yourself first before you project your own feelings onto your partner. Then, communication while more complex has a chance of being more accurate and the fighting can begin to slow down.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Marriage is like a three-legged race.
When I was a child I remember picnics where we ran the three-legged race. Two people had their middle legs attached, and the objective was to run in unison with your middle legs tied together, so that between the two of you the couple had three legs. The race required coordination so the couple ran together in harmony. It was not an easy task, but eventually the couple learnt how to run together by coordinating their bodies as one.
Marriage requires a similar skill. Marriage is a team effort, where the two of you are stronger than each alone. A good marriage can be defined as a union where two people are stronger as a couple, than as two separate individuals. If however, the two are divisive, and competitive with each other, you weaken the team. And thus a poor marriage is where two are worse for being a couple, than being a coordinated team.
The secret to running as a three-legged team is collaboration. Being critical of your partner only slows the team down. It is like your right hand hitting your left hand and pretending your body is not hurt. When you attack your partner, you attack yourself. If after running a three-legged race, you lose and criticize your partner for not helping, you are guaranteeing that the team will fail. Better to look at the problems that caused you as a team to fail, than criticizing your partner individually. In a three-legged race you either win together or you lose together. So too in marriage. You either both succeed, or you both fail. Blaming your partner for a marriage failure is like the left leg criticizing the right leg for not winning the race. It may make the left leg feel better, but it will not remedy the failure.
Marriage is not for everyone. Some people prefer to be single than to work together as a team. Unfortunately we as a society have pathologies singleness. We assume single people are lonely, unhappy and looking for a marital partner. This is simply immature, excessively romantic and idealistic. I know many people who are happier as an individual than as a couple, and assuming this is unnatural for humans is ridiculous.
If you wish to be married, then you must work at becoming a team. You must learn how to be a couple, as two people have to learn how to run a three-legged race as one. The key to running a three-legged race is to move your combined middle feet together as a unit, not separately as an individual. This requires coordination, a spirit of teamwork, and patience as you learn how to support each other rather than criticize and tear each other down.
All team sports require the individuals give up most of their personal ego for the benefit of the team. For example, on a football team, it is imperative for a quarterback to be blocked by his front line. Every successful quarterback always congratulates his front line when they win, and when they lose they are very discrete about criticizing in public their team members. Successful football teams work together as a group. With group sport teams, they all succeed or they all fail together.
Marriage is the same as team sports. Team is the essence of marital success. The team cooperates, coordinates and collaborates. In so doing they either succeed together or they fail in their mission as a team.
Marriage requires a similar skill. Marriage is a team effort, where the two of you are stronger than each alone. A good marriage can be defined as a union where two people are stronger as a couple, than as two separate individuals. If however, the two are divisive, and competitive with each other, you weaken the team. And thus a poor marriage is where two are worse for being a couple, than being a coordinated team.
The secret to running as a three-legged team is collaboration. Being critical of your partner only slows the team down. It is like your right hand hitting your left hand and pretending your body is not hurt. When you attack your partner, you attack yourself. If after running a three-legged race, you lose and criticize your partner for not helping, you are guaranteeing that the team will fail. Better to look at the problems that caused you as a team to fail, than criticizing your partner individually. In a three-legged race you either win together or you lose together. So too in marriage. You either both succeed, or you both fail. Blaming your partner for a marriage failure is like the left leg criticizing the right leg for not winning the race. It may make the left leg feel better, but it will not remedy the failure.
Marriage is not for everyone. Some people prefer to be single than to work together as a team. Unfortunately we as a society have pathologies singleness. We assume single people are lonely, unhappy and looking for a marital partner. This is simply immature, excessively romantic and idealistic. I know many people who are happier as an individual than as a couple, and assuming this is unnatural for humans is ridiculous.
If you wish to be married, then you must work at becoming a team. You must learn how to be a couple, as two people have to learn how to run a three-legged race as one. The key to running a three-legged race is to move your combined middle feet together as a unit, not separately as an individual. This requires coordination, a spirit of teamwork, and patience as you learn how to support each other rather than criticize and tear each other down.
All team sports require the individuals give up most of their personal ego for the benefit of the team. For example, on a football team, it is imperative for a quarterback to be blocked by his front line. Every successful quarterback always congratulates his front line when they win, and when they lose they are very discrete about criticizing in public their team members. Successful football teams work together as a group. With group sport teams, they all succeed or they all fail together.
Marriage is the same as team sports. Team is the essence of marital success. The team cooperates, coordinates and collaborates. In so doing they either succeed together or they fail in their mission as a team.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Day I Fell Out of the Sky
THE DAY I FELL OUT OF THE SKY.
Or
The Near Death Experience of Worldwide Capitalism and what we all can learn from this financial crisis.
In 1993 I learnt how to fly off the cliff’s at Fort Funston, San Francisco with a paraglider. A parachute with a built in harness that one sits in while riding the wind along the Pacific Oceans cliffs. What a thrill. To fly like a bird. To become totally one with the experience. This was what the Buddhists call living in the present moment. The excitement was so intense; there is no time to think of anything but what I was doing right NOW.
I had skied for many years at Lake Tahoe. Beginning in 1969 at Mt. Rose, I learnt on the bunny slopes. Eventually I advanced to the black diamond areas. But as with most experiences, after many years of skiing, I grew bored and decided to find a replacement that would take me to new dimensions, new heights, with new thrills.
Paragliding is flying without wings. You ride the wind along the cliffs turning the paraglider with hand held straps. Soaring like a bird, I felt I was in heaven. And in a sense I was. Until, on Memorial Day 1993 I hit turbulence and my paraglider stalled, and I fell out of the sky.
I was seventy feet up in the air, and the wind blew my parachute back off the cliffs into the place where there is not wind. A place of no wind is hard to conceive. Wind, like water has a predictable path. You can see water as it moves downhill. You cannot see the wind as it follows its predictable flow like water finding the path of least resistance.
Back twenty feet from the cliffs I entered the dangerous calm. As soon as I entered this space my paraglider collapsed as the air that kept me aloft left the paraglider. I instantly fell 70 feet onto my back landing in a bed of ice plant. I recall the turbulence before the fall. I do not recall the fall. The next moment I was lying on the ground falling to earth doing spinal cord injury to my body as the disc between C-6 and C-7 exploded onto my spinal cord when I broke my neck.
I recall my first thought well. “I never anticipated this in my life time. This is something very new for me. What is this about?” I could not move. I was paralyzed. Immediate other paragliders were by my side keeping me still. Someone called 911 and in minutes the ambulance was there to take me to Seton Hospital in South San Francisco.
It was six months before I learnt how to walk again. Kaiser Hospital in Vallejo, California has a state of the art facility for spinal cord injury patients. In Vallejo, I began life all over again. Learning first how to sit upright without fainting, then how to use a wheel chair, and then slowly learning how to walk again. Finally after 6 months I learnt how to live in harmony with my life altering injury and the continual pain associated with incomplete quadriplegia.
I learnt many lessons from this experience but without a doubt the most important lesson was that when confronted with a life altering experience, self pity is self defeating. Somehow I instantly knew that if I climbed down into the self pity pit, no one could come and get me out. Self pity is a deep dark hole in life that only you can extricate yourself from. Not only that, but self pity gets old and boring to you and your friends and family. If you sing the song of poor me for too long, you will end up friendless. Besides, you cease learning what is always present within life’s major lessons when stuck in self pity.
Years later I came to learn that the word Nirvana means “place of no wind”. What I now know is that with this accident I visited Nirvana, the place of no wind. In that magical place of no wind (Nirvana), the paraglider collapsed, and I came crashing down to earth in my fall from the sky.
Like all survivors of near death experiences, the catastrophe was also my greatest blessing. I learnt lessons I could not have leant any other way. I know this because until I broke my neck and produced spinal cord injury, my thinking was very different. This was life altering. This was a life lesson given to me in seconds that enabled me to change my entire view of life. Even my mother acknowledges that this experience changed my personality. Instantly, life long issues vanished. I began anew.
Every crisis has within it an enormous opportunity. The economic disaster the entire capitalistic world is currently going through is a near death experience of capitalism. This is our once in a life time event. It is being compared to the great depression. Maybe it shall be worse, maybe it shall be as bad, but either way, experts tell us this is our 1930 experience happening to us in 2008.
Now we collectively will change. For many it feels like the end of economic prosperity. For many it is joblessness and then possible homelessness. Everyone is affected. No one is immune or safe. For the optimist, it is however an opportunity to change our lives and live in harmony with the new economic situation that has been delivered to the entire capitalistic planet. This is our once in a life time experience to change. Like all catastrophes, this is too rich an experience to allow ourselves the feelings of self pity. Now we will all learn what we are supposed to learn from this financial crisis. We shall all be different when this is complete, just as the generation that went through the great depression was permanently affected by that great event.
We do not yet know what is really happening. No one knows. No economist, no prophet, no magician, no politician, no President. We are all flying solo, and we are in the midst of a major event that will support us all to become different than we have been before.
This is our collective Nirvana. This is our visitation of the place with no wind. This is our once in a life time chance to change. This is our collective fall from the sky. And when it has passed, we shall all know why this has happened and we shall all be different than we were before this occurred. 2008 was the beginning of our collective near death experience.
Or
The Near Death Experience of Worldwide Capitalism and what we all can learn from this financial crisis.
In 1993 I learnt how to fly off the cliff’s at Fort Funston, San Francisco with a paraglider. A parachute with a built in harness that one sits in while riding the wind along the Pacific Oceans cliffs. What a thrill. To fly like a bird. To become totally one with the experience. This was what the Buddhists call living in the present moment. The excitement was so intense; there is no time to think of anything but what I was doing right NOW.
I had skied for many years at Lake Tahoe. Beginning in 1969 at Mt. Rose, I learnt on the bunny slopes. Eventually I advanced to the black diamond areas. But as with most experiences, after many years of skiing, I grew bored and decided to find a replacement that would take me to new dimensions, new heights, with new thrills.
Paragliding is flying without wings. You ride the wind along the cliffs turning the paraglider with hand held straps. Soaring like a bird, I felt I was in heaven. And in a sense I was. Until, on Memorial Day 1993 I hit turbulence and my paraglider stalled, and I fell out of the sky.
I was seventy feet up in the air, and the wind blew my parachute back off the cliffs into the place where there is not wind. A place of no wind is hard to conceive. Wind, like water has a predictable path. You can see water as it moves downhill. You cannot see the wind as it follows its predictable flow like water finding the path of least resistance.
Back twenty feet from the cliffs I entered the dangerous calm. As soon as I entered this space my paraglider collapsed as the air that kept me aloft left the paraglider. I instantly fell 70 feet onto my back landing in a bed of ice plant. I recall the turbulence before the fall. I do not recall the fall. The next moment I was lying on the ground falling to earth doing spinal cord injury to my body as the disc between C-6 and C-7 exploded onto my spinal cord when I broke my neck.
I recall my first thought well. “I never anticipated this in my life time. This is something very new for me. What is this about?” I could not move. I was paralyzed. Immediate other paragliders were by my side keeping me still. Someone called 911 and in minutes the ambulance was there to take me to Seton Hospital in South San Francisco.
It was six months before I learnt how to walk again. Kaiser Hospital in Vallejo, California has a state of the art facility for spinal cord injury patients. In Vallejo, I began life all over again. Learning first how to sit upright without fainting, then how to use a wheel chair, and then slowly learning how to walk again. Finally after 6 months I learnt how to live in harmony with my life altering injury and the continual pain associated with incomplete quadriplegia.
I learnt many lessons from this experience but without a doubt the most important lesson was that when confronted with a life altering experience, self pity is self defeating. Somehow I instantly knew that if I climbed down into the self pity pit, no one could come and get me out. Self pity is a deep dark hole in life that only you can extricate yourself from. Not only that, but self pity gets old and boring to you and your friends and family. If you sing the song of poor me for too long, you will end up friendless. Besides, you cease learning what is always present within life’s major lessons when stuck in self pity.
Years later I came to learn that the word Nirvana means “place of no wind”. What I now know is that with this accident I visited Nirvana, the place of no wind. In that magical place of no wind (Nirvana), the paraglider collapsed, and I came crashing down to earth in my fall from the sky.
Like all survivors of near death experiences, the catastrophe was also my greatest blessing. I learnt lessons I could not have leant any other way. I know this because until I broke my neck and produced spinal cord injury, my thinking was very different. This was life altering. This was a life lesson given to me in seconds that enabled me to change my entire view of life. Even my mother acknowledges that this experience changed my personality. Instantly, life long issues vanished. I began anew.
Every crisis has within it an enormous opportunity. The economic disaster the entire capitalistic world is currently going through is a near death experience of capitalism. This is our once in a life time event. It is being compared to the great depression. Maybe it shall be worse, maybe it shall be as bad, but either way, experts tell us this is our 1930 experience happening to us in 2008.
Now we collectively will change. For many it feels like the end of economic prosperity. For many it is joblessness and then possible homelessness. Everyone is affected. No one is immune or safe. For the optimist, it is however an opportunity to change our lives and live in harmony with the new economic situation that has been delivered to the entire capitalistic planet. This is our once in a life time experience to change. Like all catastrophes, this is too rich an experience to allow ourselves the feelings of self pity. Now we will all learn what we are supposed to learn from this financial crisis. We shall all be different when this is complete, just as the generation that went through the great depression was permanently affected by that great event.
We do not yet know what is really happening. No one knows. No economist, no prophet, no magician, no politician, no President. We are all flying solo, and we are in the midst of a major event that will support us all to become different than we have been before.
This is our collective Nirvana. This is our visitation of the place with no wind. This is our once in a life time chance to change. This is our collective fall from the sky. And when it has passed, we shall all know why this has happened and we shall all be different than we were before this occurred. 2008 was the beginning of our collective near death experience.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Divorce ends a marriage; it never end a Family
Death ends a life; it does not end a relationship. Divorce ends a marriage; it does not end a family. Upon death the relationship continues to live inside the living. Upon divorce, the family lives on while the parents separate from their children.
No family escapes the pain and damage of a divorce. I teach a workshop that teaches how that damage can be limited.All divorce creates trauma for children, just as all war creates PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) for all who fight in battle. Your children are wounded by your divorce.
How deep the wound is depends upon how the divorce is handled.This workshop teaches the skills needed to limit the damage from a divorce. There will be damage, but the extent of the damage can be modified with thoughtful guidance and learnt skills. This workshop is about teaching those specific skills.The end result is to hold the family unit as a team as much as possible while the marriage ends.
Divorce ends a marriage, it never ends a family. Whether the family is severely damaged or the damage is limited is the responsibility of the two parents. This workshop teaches the key principles that limit the damage from a divorce.
E-mail me or call at 650-726-1212 for the next available workshop on this topic.
No family escapes the pain and damage of a divorce. I teach a workshop that teaches how that damage can be limited.All divorce creates trauma for children, just as all war creates PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) for all who fight in battle. Your children are wounded by your divorce.
How deep the wound is depends upon how the divorce is handled.This workshop teaches the skills needed to limit the damage from a divorce. There will be damage, but the extent of the damage can be modified with thoughtful guidance and learnt skills. This workshop is about teaching those specific skills.The end result is to hold the family unit as a team as much as possible while the marriage ends.
Divorce ends a marriage, it never ends a family. Whether the family is severely damaged or the damage is limited is the responsibility of the two parents. This workshop teaches the key principles that limit the damage from a divorce.
E-mail me or call at 650-726-1212 for the next available workshop on this topic.
Friday, December 26, 2008
The Power of Belief
The Power of Belief Henry Ford said: "believe you can, believe you can't, either way your right."We are living in challenging times and no one has to explain that to us. What we may not know is that our viewpoint of the times will determine whether we are successful or whether or not we shall fail.In 1993 I was paragliding and fell 70 feet on my back and broke my neck. I was instantly paralyzed. I recall my first thought. "I never dreamed this would happen to me". I became instantly engaged in a process that would require 6 months hospitalization and a physical therapy 8-hour day as I learnt how to walk again. My neck was broken at C6 and I had done permanent spinal cord injury. My future was very unknown to everyone but me.From deep within me I found the entire experience positive. I never dreamed I would not recover. I never pictured myself in a wheel chair for the rest of my life. I just knew I had to give my all to my recovery, and in so doing I recovered much of my mobility.I have told many people since "The best thing that ever happened to me is that I broke my neck". I constantly get the response that is a strange way to view your accident. Then i say, "OK, the worst thing that ever happened to me is that I broke my neck. Which way would you look at the experience given I had broken my neck?"The power of belief is well documented. The mind can return from all types of adversity. People are incredibly powerful if they give themselves the willingness to achieve success in the face of difficult odds.As a community of people, we are all trying to make our way through these tough times, and it is easy to just let down and give up. But in so doing we shall achieve nothing. Better to fight back. Better to hold onto the power of positive thinking.During my 6 months in hospital many incidents helped me in my recovery. But undoubtedly the strongest gift was the power of friendship and the strength in people supporting people. That got me through the hardest times, and the bleakest nights.Community is power. If we support each other, we can make it to the end goal, whatever we decide that is for us. But it requires people supporting people. It requires community.Obama is the President elect because he understands community organization. He could have taken any job upon graduation but chose to go to Chicago and make $13,000 per year as a community organizer. He was ridiculed by some for having such small capabilities, but the truth is the last laugh is upon his critics, because he community organized himself right into the White House. And now, he intends to community organize the USA into a full economic recovery.I have no doubt he will succeed. It is not him, it is us. He constantly says so. And he is right. But he does provide the right backdrop for "US" to make it. He is the right leader for the right time.I encourage all of us to community organize ourselves into a successful venture. I encourage all of us to view life positively rather than hopelessly.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Creating a Long Term Successful relationship
Creating a Successful Long Term Relationship
The average marriage lasts 6.8 years. Makes you wonder about the “seven year itch” Marilyn Monroe spoke of. Historically most couples stayed together for financial reasons. Today, financial support will not hold relationships together. Emotional support is required for a lasting and successful marriage.
What is emotional support? It is the love bond that exists between two who want to join their separateness into one. It is the ability to communicate feelings. It is the quality of friendship that must exist in a marriage if it is to survive the challenges of stressful life.
When a relationship begins to turn sour, inevitably most people blame their partner. Being right and making the other wrong holds more value than love, peace and harmony. The ego reins, and love begins to die. Mature individuals resist the temptation to blame and make the other evil. Watching grown adults fight like children in kindergarten may be understandable, but it doesn’t create soul. Mature and loving people face their inevitable challenges with dignity and grace and resist the temptation to throw insults at each other like children in a sandbox.
What to do when your relationship is faced with challenge. First and foremost, accept the reality that a wonderful relationship isn’t just destined, it is also hard work. To believe that relationship is effortless is to believe in magical thinking. Children use magical thinking as fantasy to avoid responsibility and work. Grown adults too often revert to such childish behavior when they give up when the going gets tough. No relationship is always easy. Just as a beautiful rose garden is created by a dedicated gardener, so a beautiful relationship is weeded, watered, and fertilized by the couple who treasure what they have. It may be tempting to see a beautiful cultivated area and magically believe it “just happened” but I can promise you, some dedicated gardener has spent countless hours caring for the elegance that you are beholding.
Beyond accepting that all wonderful relationships require work and effort, it is also important to engage each other using your differences as strength, not weakness. Too often, people see differences as difficult, rather than understanding that difference is healthy. If we were all the same, we would never grow. It is in our differences that we are challenged and created. Sameness is boredom and death. Difference is aliveness and creation.
Finally, a successful long term relationship understands the value of patience. Good things happen to those who wait. It is in the waiting that growth occurs and love deepens. Impatience is short sighted. Patience is at the heart of longevity.
The average marriage lasts 6.8 years. Makes you wonder about the “seven year itch” Marilyn Monroe spoke of. Historically most couples stayed together for financial reasons. Today, financial support will not hold relationships together. Emotional support is required for a lasting and successful marriage.
What is emotional support? It is the love bond that exists between two who want to join their separateness into one. It is the ability to communicate feelings. It is the quality of friendship that must exist in a marriage if it is to survive the challenges of stressful life.
When a relationship begins to turn sour, inevitably most people blame their partner. Being right and making the other wrong holds more value than love, peace and harmony. The ego reins, and love begins to die. Mature individuals resist the temptation to blame and make the other evil. Watching grown adults fight like children in kindergarten may be understandable, but it doesn’t create soul. Mature and loving people face their inevitable challenges with dignity and grace and resist the temptation to throw insults at each other like children in a sandbox.
What to do when your relationship is faced with challenge. First and foremost, accept the reality that a wonderful relationship isn’t just destined, it is also hard work. To believe that relationship is effortless is to believe in magical thinking. Children use magical thinking as fantasy to avoid responsibility and work. Grown adults too often revert to such childish behavior when they give up when the going gets tough. No relationship is always easy. Just as a beautiful rose garden is created by a dedicated gardener, so a beautiful relationship is weeded, watered, and fertilized by the couple who treasure what they have. It may be tempting to see a beautiful cultivated area and magically believe it “just happened” but I can promise you, some dedicated gardener has spent countless hours caring for the elegance that you are beholding.
Beyond accepting that all wonderful relationships require work and effort, it is also important to engage each other using your differences as strength, not weakness. Too often, people see differences as difficult, rather than understanding that difference is healthy. If we were all the same, we would never grow. It is in our differences that we are challenged and created. Sameness is boredom and death. Difference is aliveness and creation.
Finally, a successful long term relationship understands the value of patience. Good things happen to those who wait. It is in the waiting that growth occurs and love deepens. Impatience is short sighted. Patience is at the heart of longevity.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Turning Off The Worry Machine
Turning Off The Worry Machine
The secret to loving and living well is not to allow worry to control your thinking. In other words, not to give into the human emotion we commonly call fear. That is easy to understand. What is truly a riddle is how do humans turn off the worry machine? Saying, “stop worrying” doesn’t do cease worry and fear. Declaring you will stop worrying, is just an argument you have with yourself about this behavior. Worry will not stop with mental will power. So how do you turn the brain worry process off?Wait. If worry cannot be controlled by thinking “don’t worry”, why attempt to turn it off? Why not laugh at it. Why not be the observer of the machine and watch your own thinking. When you recognize that you are not your mind, you can begin to see the ridiculousness of worry. It is a mind puzzle set up inside the human psyche, similar to the rat chasing the cheese inside a maze in a psychological lab.To understand that you are not your mind, begin by observing your finger. If you lost that finger, would you still be you? Yes, of course. Then you are not your finger. You use your finger, which is directed by your brain to obey your thoughts. Just as you are not your finger, ultimately you can recognize that you are not your mind. You use your mind, but you are the consciousness using your mind to receive and give your being information.You are however trapped inside your mind. Some of the information you receive in your mind is wrong. To counteract the capacity to believe fearful thoughts, you can accept that you are not your mind, but that you use your mind, and right now your mind is misbehavioring by worrying. You are the consciousness observing and deciding all that is occurring in your experience. You use your finger and your mind but you are not your finger or your mind. Understanding this is essential to turning off the worry machine. You can only manage the mind with your consciousness.Now to understand worry. Worry is false thinking. Worry is based upon fear, never is worry based upon love. Worry is a dress rehearsal for a possible disaster created by the mind as a mental preparing for such possibility so you can be ready when disaster strikes. This worry creates stress and does harm to your body. It also interferes with your relationships. Fear is not a healthy basis for good relationships. Love is the better choice over fear and worry.Worry defines who you are. Those important things you worry about define who your personality is, how you respond, and how you show up in life. If you worry about your appearance, then you place all your attention to that, and everyone knows that about you. When you worry, stress appears, and you move out of harmony with yourselves.Turning off the worry machine requires you begin to live in the present moment rather than allow your mind to race into the future. When we race into the future and worry, we allow fear to consume us. Pulling your mind out of this futuristic negative thinking, allows you to recognize that worry is a fantasy of the future based upon your personal fears. Living right now you will see that nothing is wrong. But thinking about the future being wrong produces worry, fear and stress. This projection of your thinking into the future is worry or fear. Love is based on living in the present moment. Fear is based upon living in the future.Truth is worry is a psychological disease that is epidemic within our Western society. The media feeds us information to stimulate fear in the news, movies and other entertainment. This is because fear is a powerful motivator. The media uses fear to sell us the commercials that feeds the fear-producing machine called your thinking or your mind.Not only does the media feed the public fear, politicians and religious fundamental charismatics also use fear to sell people their products. Be careful of fear mongers. They usually have something to sell you, and once purchased you end up the worse in the deal. They feed you fear and you respond, as they want you to respond.Worry is a negative aspect of the human mind that can be lessened. To do this, you must accept that you are the consciousness observing the mind’s thoughts. You do not have to yield to the fear and worry. You can choice to laugh at the thoughts and dismiss the topic as soon as your conscious mind will allow the topic to disappear. Always remember the conscious mind is similar to a chattering monkey sitting on your shoulder always judging and always commenting upon everything you observe. The conscious mind is not always your friend. When you worry, you do not love yourself.
The secret to loving and living well is not to allow worry to control your thinking. In other words, not to give into the human emotion we commonly call fear. That is easy to understand. What is truly a riddle is how do humans turn off the worry machine? Saying, “stop worrying” doesn’t do cease worry and fear. Declaring you will stop worrying, is just an argument you have with yourself about this behavior. Worry will not stop with mental will power. So how do you turn the brain worry process off?Wait. If worry cannot be controlled by thinking “don’t worry”, why attempt to turn it off? Why not laugh at it. Why not be the observer of the machine and watch your own thinking. When you recognize that you are not your mind, you can begin to see the ridiculousness of worry. It is a mind puzzle set up inside the human psyche, similar to the rat chasing the cheese inside a maze in a psychological lab.To understand that you are not your mind, begin by observing your finger. If you lost that finger, would you still be you? Yes, of course. Then you are not your finger. You use your finger, which is directed by your brain to obey your thoughts. Just as you are not your finger, ultimately you can recognize that you are not your mind. You use your mind, but you are the consciousness using your mind to receive and give your being information.You are however trapped inside your mind. Some of the information you receive in your mind is wrong. To counteract the capacity to believe fearful thoughts, you can accept that you are not your mind, but that you use your mind, and right now your mind is misbehavioring by worrying. You are the consciousness observing and deciding all that is occurring in your experience. You use your finger and your mind but you are not your finger or your mind. Understanding this is essential to turning off the worry machine. You can only manage the mind with your consciousness.Now to understand worry. Worry is false thinking. Worry is based upon fear, never is worry based upon love. Worry is a dress rehearsal for a possible disaster created by the mind as a mental preparing for such possibility so you can be ready when disaster strikes. This worry creates stress and does harm to your body. It also interferes with your relationships. Fear is not a healthy basis for good relationships. Love is the better choice over fear and worry.Worry defines who you are. Those important things you worry about define who your personality is, how you respond, and how you show up in life. If you worry about your appearance, then you place all your attention to that, and everyone knows that about you. When you worry, stress appears, and you move out of harmony with yourselves.Turning off the worry machine requires you begin to live in the present moment rather than allow your mind to race into the future. When we race into the future and worry, we allow fear to consume us. Pulling your mind out of this futuristic negative thinking, allows you to recognize that worry is a fantasy of the future based upon your personal fears. Living right now you will see that nothing is wrong. But thinking about the future being wrong produces worry, fear and stress. This projection of your thinking into the future is worry or fear. Love is based on living in the present moment. Fear is based upon living in the future.Truth is worry is a psychological disease that is epidemic within our Western society. The media feeds us information to stimulate fear in the news, movies and other entertainment. This is because fear is a powerful motivator. The media uses fear to sell us the commercials that feeds the fear-producing machine called your thinking or your mind.Not only does the media feed the public fear, politicians and religious fundamental charismatics also use fear to sell people their products. Be careful of fear mongers. They usually have something to sell you, and once purchased you end up the worse in the deal. They feed you fear and you respond, as they want you to respond.Worry is a negative aspect of the human mind that can be lessened. To do this, you must accept that you are the consciousness observing the mind’s thoughts. You do not have to yield to the fear and worry. You can choice to laugh at the thoughts and dismiss the topic as soon as your conscious mind will allow the topic to disappear. Always remember the conscious mind is similar to a chattering monkey sitting on your shoulder always judging and always commenting upon everything you observe. The conscious mind is not always your friend. When you worry, you do not love yourself.
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