Honestly,,, nothing.  In truth you are fine.   There really is nothing wrong with you.  That’s my perspective with everyone I talk to.  And I talk to a lot of people because I do this professionally.  The next question is:

“But I don’t feel fine. Why do I feel so lousy, (angry, sad, unhappy, jealous, insecure, anxiety, etc)?”

Because the emotions you feel are being created as responses to beliefs you have.  Your beliefs are negative, fearful, anxiety ridden, and your emotions respond accordingly.  Your emotions are responding perfectly to what is going on in your mind.  The problem is that you are having negative and fearful thoughts running through your mind,,, and you are believing in them.  How you feel emotionally is just a natural response to the beliefs you have.  The important thing to understand is that YOU are not the problem.  There is nothing wrong with you, it’s what is going on in your mind that is the problem.  Your mind has thoughts and beliefs that are false and fear based. You are not those thoughts and beliefs.  As a matter of fact,,, you aren’t even the one thinking them.   Your mind is tossing them about your imagination all by itself.

In my approach I make a distinction between YOU, and your mind which is made up of your thoughts and beliefs.  YOU are fine, but your mind is filled with false and fear based beliefs.

Some people will then ask, “But why am I thinking all these negative thoughts.   And this is my point,,, YOU are not the one thinking those negative thoughts.  Your mind is thinking them all on it’s own and taking you for a ride much like a daydream, or even a night time dream.  Sometimes those daydreams turn into very focused horrific scenarios and can seem very real.   Your emotional body can’t tell the difference between reality, and what you believe is reality so it reacts according to those dreams in your mind.

Your physiology and physical body can react as well.  Your adrenalin will kick in when there is a fearful thought, as well as other fight or flight responses.  You then might have the physical responses of those chemicals in your system as well as tightness in your muscles, shifts in your digestion, accelerated heart beat, on top of your emotional responses.  Your specific reaction will depend on how fearful the thought is, how strongly you believe it, and how much awareness you have.

___________________________________

I have made a free audio podcast, “What is a belief?” and how it affects our mind and emotions that explains this in more detail.
___________________________________

Are you saying this is all in my head?

No.  Some of your emotions might be from very real life experiences.  Some of our emotions can be from real life events while some emotions are in response to what our mind projects.  Suppose you are in the midst of a divorce.  Your spouse is splitting up with you and now you are only seeing your children half time.

Those things are real and you are going to go through some emotional cycles as things change.  Those are not part of what your mind is projecting and dreaming.  Those are the facts.  But the facts probably aren’t causing you as much unhappiness as the dreamed up scenarios your mind is spinning.  Those might be how you have failed as a father, as a husband, that your life is ruined, that your kids lives are ruined, that they will be broken the rest of their life.  Those are dreams you are having in your mind.  They are imagined projections about how the rest of your life will turn out, or how your children’s lives will turn out.   They are generally fearful, unhappy, and only exist as movies in your imagination; or what I call dreams in your mind.  You might also call them thoughts or beliefs.

The distinction that is important to make here is between the facts, and what your mind projects onto the facts.  Some of your emotions are a response to real life events.  But many of your emotions, are from things you imagine.  To have the clarity to perceive the difference between reality, and projections of the mind is what I call awareness.  Awareness is critical to changing how you feel emotionally.

With awareness you first become aware of the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and judgments the mind projects all by itself.  Then notice how much of your emotions come from your mental projections.   These are the emotions that are easiest to change.  You will still likely have some emotions stemming from the reality of how your life is changing.  These emotions can and will change too with some more attention and practice.  It is also much easier to change these emotions once you don’t have the added layer of emotions coming from your negative thoughts and fear based beliefs.

What you discover in this process is that YOU don’t have to change.  That’s because you are not the problem.  You are fine.  The problem is with the negative thoughts and false beliefs in your mind causing all those emotional reactions.  When you change the interpretations your mind makes, your emotional state changes.  Then you are back on your way to feeling fine again.  This is why developing awareness is the key to lasting happiness.

Even the question, “What is wrong with me?” is a combination of thoughts and false beliefs.  It is built on the assumed belief that:

a)  There is something wrong with me.

b)   I don’t know what is wrong so that is another problem of not knowing.

c)   I should know what is wrong with me but I don’t so I feel confused because I don’t know something my belief system says I should know.

All of these thoughts have us chasing some phantom idea that there is something wrong with us.  Why don’t we find it,,, because there is nothing wrong with us.  Yes we feel bad, but that is because we are caught up in these assumed beliefs that there is something wrong.   It’s like we got on the wrong line of questioning and it is taking us into a nightmare dream that there are no answers for.   It’s equivalent to spending time trying to answer the question, “What is the smell of piano music?”  It’s a nonsense question and we would be wasting our time trying to answer it.  The same is true for the question, “What is wrong with me?

We are much better served asking questions like:

What do I believe that isn’t true?  Is the thought my mind thinking helpful to making me happy?  What assumptions are behind that thought that make it not true?   How are those false beliefs affecting me emotionally?  What are the steps to changing these beliefs?

Go to the Self Mastery Course for  practical steps to finding and changing your false and fear based beliefs. By using the tools you learn in the course you will develop awareness about what is going on in your mind and have the tools to change it.

Recently while journaling after an emotional reaction I had an interesting experience I thought I would share.

2nd Person) On the other hand, the image of the 2nd person was created and compared to the assumed image of myself. The judge ruled that the 2^nd person’s image was superior to the image it had for me according to its book of how people should be (Image of Perfection). It determined I was inferior to the other person and so developed another set of ‘rules’ for how the 2nd person should act.  They were a lot different than the set for the 1st person. I believed that because this person is better than me he has the right to judge me and mistreat me. I believed I was what he said I was.  So the judge judges me for not being as I should, as long as I believe I am what he says. My belief system and the voices in my head believe I am at fault and so the ego directs its anger towards me. I am now caught in a spiral of fear, judgment and anger all directed towards myself. In reality the judgment is towards an image which I create and assume is me. If I see this I can watch the reaction without actually being in it.

In both cases the same words were spoken but I felt very differently depending on what I believed about the two people.

Here’s the most important line to read in the second to last paragraph.

If I see this I can watch the reaction without actually being in it.

My take on that is:  If you have awareness, you are free to avoid emotional reactions.

The other point to note here is that this detailed realization really senses the basis for responsibility of our emotions to our self.  This isn’t always a comfortable feeling.  It isn’t always comfortable because we sometimes comfort our self by blaming others.   However, in taking responsibility, we open to door to having power over our emotions.  As long as we are blaming others (abdicating power of our emotions to others) we are dependent on other people to change how we feel.

What Sam discovered was that he was indeed responsible for creating his own emotional reactions.   When he saw how he created his emotions, he could no longer deny that he was creating his emotions.

The important part here is that through developing his awareness of what was going on in his mind Sam is able to change his emotional reaction.   This is important because knowing what is going on or why it is going on isn’t what we want.  What we want is to change our emotional reactions.   These are some of the results you can expect from the Self Mastery Course.

How many times do we say we are going to do something, and then don’t to it?   How many times do we say we are going to do something, notice we don’t do it, and still don’t do it?  We are procrastinating.  Even when we are aware we are procrastinating, we still procrastinate.  It makes you wonder what is really going on with us. More importantly, how do we stop procrastinating?

I like the anecdote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Procrastination is a pattern of good intentions.    As we dig deeper into the issue there is a natural follow up question, “If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then what is the road to heaven paved with?”   “Humility.”  Says James Garner in a line from the movie Ya Ya Sisterhood.  Humility, or a softening of our ego mind has a lot to do with eliminating procrastination.

What is humility?  I checked my Word processing program for synonyms and the one I like best is “unassuming nature.”  Let us take it to mean no ego nature; no mask of a false self-image.  Humility is being authentic and genuine.  It is what is left when you strip away all the layers of ego we carry around as a mask.  So what does this have to do with procrastination?   Procrastination is a product of the ego mind.  It is those false layers of self image that are the root cause of our bad habits.  When we strip away the ego mind we get rid of the root causes of our procrastination.

When we are humble, or without ego, we say what we mean, and we do what we say.  We don’t pretend to others, or to our self, that we are something we are not.  Notice that nowhere do I relate being humble to being meek, weak, timid, or small.  Real humility comes with a quiet confidence that is a source of power and resolve.

So how does humility help break the pattern of procrastination and get on with what we really want?  It all begins with awareness.

The ego and the false self images of the mind tricks us into procrastinating.  When you are aware of these tricks you can avoid falling for them.  To help develop this awareness we’ll start by looking at the your belief system and ego and see how they work.

Why Do We Procrastinate

Let’s first look at how and why the ego mind causes us to create procrastination.  The first noticeable action is that we make a declaration of a good intention for our self or someone else.  We’ll use the example of meditating.  We make a declaration, either in our thoughts or out loud to someone else, “I’m going to start meditating.”  In our imagination we create an image of our self sitting serenely.   We essentially make a movie in our mind with our self image as the main character.  We are doing something good, we are feeling good, and the most important thing is that we feel good about our self in our little mental movie.  Every time we think about meditating and say we are going to start we project that good self image in our little mental movie. It all happens in about 1.5 seconds.  Then it is done.  In our mind we have accomplished the task and we go on with the next thought the mind has.

What this imaginary movie does is satisfy the mind’s need for to control our attention for a little bit and give us a sense of identification with the character in our projection.  In the process we get a nice feeling as we identify with a positive self image in our mental movie.   It is the belief that we are the character in this mental movie that serves the ego and gives us a small emotional boost.

But the ego is not done yet.  It is a bit more complicated than just the singular image from one story.  We actually have many images or aspects from the ego mind that we identify with. One of the common mental movie stories we project is of failure.  Our mind projects a story of us failing or not measuring up in some way and casts a different self image in the starring role.  Sometimes this happens in 1.5 seconds also.   It happens when we think about failing, or other people judging us, or being told no.   In any imagined story like that we are again the main character but in this story we are a failure, or are rejected.  In these mental movies we identify with the failure image and believe that the projected self image in the mental movie is us.  When we are unaware and do not distinguish between our Self, and the image of our self in our mental movie out ego has effectively taken us for an emotional ride.  In this false identification we believe we are the character in our thoughts.   In fact, this is only a facet of the ego.

So far we have both a success image that is a facet of the ego and a failure image that is a facet of the ego.  In the procrastination scenario the ego’s success image gets reinforced by us telling our self we are going to meditate.  The failure image gets reinforced when we don’t meditate.

Each day we don’t meditate the mind projects an image of our selves failing.  Each time we imagine that we will meditating we identify with that positive self image.  Each time we think about meditating we project one of these two images and identify with the success image or the failure image, or both.  When we think about meditating and don’t do it but we reinforce both false images of the ego.  It is these false images of the ego that get served and become stronger.  The detrimental aspect of this is only seen when you are aware that the mental projection of self isn’t you at all.

The Ego Mind on it’s Own

The failure image of the ego mind actually needs you to NOT meditate.  If you actually started meditating regularly, the failure based self image would have no basis for being.  We would no longer identify with the failure image.  If I say I am going to meditate, and then I do it, I have no reason to judge my self as a failure.  Of course the ego mind is likely to adapt in other ways.  Our mind will project that we should be meditating more, longer, our posture should be better, our mind should be quieter, and we should be having blessed out Samadhi experiences by now.  Since this isn’t happening the first week or month the ego mind will project that we are failing, and that we are doing something wrong.  This is just the false images of the ego mind trying in various ways for reinforcement by false identification.

When we don’t reinforce the failure image in our mind it makes the ego very uncomfortable.  The ego self image begins to feel like it is dying.  We might think that if a negative image were dying that we would feel better about our self, but that is not the case.  The collapsing false image in the mind creates a feeling that is very uncomfortable.  We go through all sorts of emotions as the false image that we believe is our identity is threatened.

When this agitation happens the mind becomes very busy with various mechanisms of distraction, deception, and denial trying to get us to not meditate.  It directs us to forget for a while that we said we were going to do it.  Then reminds us at a much later date that we didn’t do it so it can reinforce the belief we are the failure character in our mental movie.

When we think that we are going to sit down and meditate the mind senses the death of the failure image and comes up with numerous other things we could and should be doing.  Yes we got busy and the house is clean, laundry is done, bills paid, and the yard is looking pretty good.  Now there is no time to meditate, or we are too tired to meditate.  In this strategy the ego mind has won the game of distractions until we run out of time, energy, or both.  Then it waits an hour or a day, or a week, and reminds us that we failed to do what we said we were going to do.  It uses the situation to project a mental movie with us as the main character that failed.  If we identify with that failure character in our mind then the ego mind is not challenged and is comfortable again.  Yes we feel like an unworthy loser that has failed, but the ego mind is comfortable with that because it doesn’t feel like it is going to die.  Such is the challenge of not identifying with the images of your ego mind.

This article continued at Causes of Procrastination II

You can find practices and exercises for changing the core beliefs causing procrastination
in The Self Mastery Course on this site.

15 years ago I was enamored with this personal development process.  I had discovered a whole new world.   I felt alive, happy, and excited about my new adventure.  There were fears and false beliefs that I had acquired over my life and I didn’t even know they were there.   I had been dragging them around like a dark cloud over me for years.  I had been unconscious of how they hung on me with worries of success and what others thought of me.  Now I was discovering them and attacking them with excitement and a new sense of freedom as each one fell.

I felt alive, I looked at the world different, and I was happier.  I was excited and wanted to share this new discovery with my friends.  I thought everyone would want to get on board with this process of finding their fears and getting rid of them.

I remember coming back from an Intensive Spiritual Retreat and meeting a friend for dinner.  She asked how my trip was and I proceeded to pour out all my excitement.  After about 3 minutes of non-stop talking I noticed she was leaning back away from me as far as she could.  The look on her face was split between concerns that I joined a cult, and fear that she might catch something.  I realized I needed to soften my presentation.

I continued inviting people to workshops and lectures but with a gentler approach.  I talked in an indirect way about how happy we could be, and how we needed to change these fear based beliefs to do it.  People I talked to continued to be uninterested.   I went from believing that everybody would do this work to thinking hardly anybody will do this work. I began to wonder, why such resistance to being happy?

I reflected on my own process and realized the turning point for me was that I was painfully unhappy.  I had become disillusioned in my career, and around the same time had a high drama relationship that ended.  If it was just the relationship that had crashed I probably could have buried my emotions in my work.  If it was a career that had run aground, I probably could have found comfort in my relationship.  Fortunately for me, both crashed at the same time and I ended up unable to deny how unhappy I was.  Out of a lack of alternatives I needed to do something about the illusions in my mind.

I finally understood why people wouldn’t jump head first into this self awareness process.  It was emotionally uncomfortable.  The process actually involved looking inward at our fears, emotional reactions, and self judgments.  We were doing what some people call shadow work, where we look at the unpleasant emotions we feel.  Facing that critical voice in our head can be a bit scary.  People would tend to avoid that loud abusive voice in their head criticizing them, or the uncomfortable fears they felt.   Over time I realized that I couldn’t push them past this resistance, nor did I want to.

How I Overcame Some Of My Resistance

The word I had for what we were doing was “spiritual.”  The word we used to refer to our selves was “warrior.”  We used the word warrior because we were in a kind of war.  We were fighting to be free of the fears, self judgments, and the tyranny of those voices in our head and false beliefs that controlled our attention.  We were fighting against all the patterns of unhappiness that we created in our mind and our relationships.

As a person’s self importance will do, I began to think of myself and my other spiritual warriors as doing something special.  We were forging into emotionally uncomfortable places others were unwilling to go.  I started to create beliefs that I (we) were more courageous, or fearless, or wiser than others.  I built up a belief system that people who do this type of introspection and belief changing work are more conscious and evolved than the majority of people in the world.   Perhaps I even considered that we were somehow raising the consciousness of the rest of humanity.  The smaller the number of people who entered into this field of challenging their fears and endeavoring to be happy I interpreted as evidence for how special we were, particularly how special I was.  All pretty self important stuff.

Early on in my personal process of change I listened and read Joseph Campbell’s work on the Mythological Journey of the Hero.  My mind used it to feed my self importance.  Yes I was doing something of “mythological” proportions.  I was following the path the masters before me took.  I was doing what the Buddha did facing all the illusions.  My journey inward to an authentic self was the type of journey written about and read for generations to come.  Mythological,,,, that’s what it was.

It’s interesting how the stories about our selves change over time.  Was I really engaged in anything that grandiose?   I don’t think of it that way anymore.  I was certainly living myths, and the story I had of myself at that time was another myth.   All the self importance I had built up around being a spiritual warrior and the special kind of courage it exemplified was another kind of myth I lived by.  They were just stories I had in my mind about myself and other people.   It was a much better story than the victim ones it replaced, but still not the truth.

What of the fears I challenged and the tyranny of the voices in my head telling me I wasn’t good enough and all the things I “should” do to be “good enough”?  Then weren’t they mythological too.  By that I mean they weren’t real.  They didn’t have the properties of physical matter.   I was challenging fears based in stories and beliefs in my mind.  They weren’t even written on paper, that’s how “not real” they were.

One of the fears I had was of what others thought of me.  I was afraid of the opinion or thoughts that might be in another person’s head.  I was living my life and behaving as if I would be hurt, or feel better emotionally depending on anther person’s thoughts.   I tried very hard to impress people and prove myself worthy in their eyes so they wouldn’t have judgmental or negative thoughts in their mind.  I was imagining one kind of story in their head and trying to make a different one exist in their head.  I didn’t have the awareness to realize that all of these assumptions were taking place in my imagination.  I was still in my own imagination when my mind was thinking about what they were thinking.

Later I would realize that if I didn’t have the power to control the voices and opinions in my own head, then I probably didn’t have the power to change the thoughts that went on in someone else’s head

I began to look at these stories, opinions, judgments, and negative thoughts in my fearful imagination that had me scrambling, and that I felt so courageous to challenge? They weren’t real.   They were myths. They were stuff that only existed in my imagination.  They didn’t exist as anything tangible.

Where is a thought?   Can an opinion hurt me?  Can someone actually take an opinion and hit me over the head with it?  Can they do any harm to me physically?   No.  Probably the most solid judgment or criticism that I could receive would be if someone said it out loud to me.  And is it real then?  Is there anything more landing on me than the vibration of their words through the air?   How hard is the vibration of air landing on my skin?   A leaf falling on me from a tree weighs more heavily than the air of someone’s opinion.

So why was I afraid of opinions and judgments from others, or from the voice in my own head?  I believed them.  Those words and judgments from my inner judge landed heavily because I believed them.  I accepted every myth of opinion and judgment as if it were truth.  They only landed with emotional impact when I believed them.   I was scared of the stories in my head simply because I believed them, not because they were real.

Ghost Stories

All those opinions, self judgments, and fears of what others thought were like the ghost stories we had when we were kids.  Little kids are afraid that a boogey man will come out of the closet or out from under the bed.  What makes a child afraid of such imaginary characters?   They believe that such things as boogey men are real.  The ghost they are afraid of isn’t in the closet or under the bed.  It is in their mind, and their mind projects that it is in the closet.

As kids if we leave the light on, and the door cracked we feel a little better.  As if somehow that boogey man will be afraid of the light or a cracked door and will stay away.

As an adult I kept my fears locked in the closet of my unconscious.  I tried to keep my focus on the door cracked open and a little light. I did it by working extra hard to impress people with how much I knew, what my body looked like, or how clever I was.  I focused on those little moments of acceptance and respect from others and lived off that little bit of light.  At the same time afraid to look inward at the self doubts I closeted inside.

Yes I had mythological boogey men inside me.  I was afraid to disappoint the mythical voices in my head.  When I didn’t have any awareness I dreamed up in my imagination failure, rejection, and disappointment a thousand different ways.  Only when I took a journey into those seemingly dark places did I notice they were just dreams. Of course to realize they were just figments of my imagination I had to get in where they were and take a close look.  I opened the closet of my unconscious beliefs and put my attention on what my thoughts and emotions were doing.   I had to control my attention and not look away when there was an impulse of fear or discomfort.  I crawled inside the closet of my mind to see what was really there.

What I discovered were myths in my mind masquerading as something real.    How ironic I thought.  I was convinced that I was some kind of courageous spiritual warrior on a great quest.  What I was really facing were dreams,,, conceptual ideas of the mind… and ghosts stories.  They were no more real than the figments of imagination a child has about what is under the bed.  What I was doing wasn’t very courageous at all when you find out there was nothing there to be afraid of.

Do I think a 10 or 12 year old child who challenges the projected myths of his or her imagination and looks under the bed are courageous?  No, not really.  They are just doing the common sense thing and waking up from dreams and illusions in their mind and I couldn’t consider myself as this spiritual warrior to be any thing courageous either. I had about as much courage as a 10 year unable to sleep at night finally looking under the bed.  After all,, wasn’t I just facing my own ghost stories?

Why do we avoid dealing with our issues and keep putting them off?  We avoid it because in our mind we make believe our issues are scarier than they are.  Much like the 10 year old who doesn’t look under the bed, we don’t look inward because it is uncomfortable.  Instead we just crack the door and leave a small light on somewhere to distract us from our imagination.  We hurry about the tasks of our day trying not to notice how our imagination projects illusions and then how we react to them.

The challenge with our own mind is that we are fighting dreams.  They aren’t real, but they seem that way when we believe in them.

Over the course of our life we gather up beliefs.  For the most part that’s not a problem.  Most of our beliefs help us understand the world and how it works so we can function in it. However, some of those beliefs are not going to be true.  Some of those beliefs will have unnecessary fears associated with them. These are myths we believe in and cause us unhappy emotions.  You could also call them lies.

Because we accept these myths to be truth, they appear real in our mind.  We react emotionally to fearful outcomes as if they already happened.  We imagine our partner with someone else and we get angry as if they did it.  In reality it didn’t happen. It was just in our imagination.  With faith in these mythological stories we make them bigger than they are.

Then after imagining these myths we tell ourselves other lies.  We tell ourselves that they are hard to change, that we can’t make them go away.  We tell ourselves we have to live with them.  We tell ourselves we can’t change, it’s just the way we are.  More myths about change and ourself built on top of the first set of lies.

Then, for some people, something happens.  Usually the pain of living by these myths causes so much suffering that we have no choice.  We have to challenge them.  We begin a mythological journey.  A path of challenging the myths we’ve lived by.  We apply some skills, we have some successes, and we celebrate change.  We begin to build better lives.  We tell ourself we are doing something big.  It’s true that we feel happier and are more free, but not everything we think is true.

If you run this route far enough you run the risk of self important lies like I did.  You look at yourself, compared to others lack of challenging their beliefs, and you begin to think of yourself as special.  It’s a nice lie.  It feels good to think of one’s self as better than others.  It doesn’t really hurt anyone.  In a way it helps give you confidence and faith in your self that you can challenge the bigger fears and false beliefs in your mind.   Your new Ego is an ally helping dismantle the myths we live by.  In some circles it’s called the Spiritual Ego.

Then, at some point in your journey, the Spiritual Ego becomes one of the few remaining myths you live by.  With enough awareness of self, this grandiose image of ourself as a courageous warrior no longer fits.  These false beliefs that seemed so big and scary in the beginning aren’t a big deal anymore.  Maybe it is because we have been doing the work for a while so it doesn’t feel like a big deal anymore.  Maybe it is because we realize that we are only fighting dreams in our imagination.  We realize that to face such a challenge doesn’t really take any extraordinary courage at all.  It just takes common sense.

So with our most powerful tool, common sense, we realize the spiritual warrior or enlightened being with special consciousness story doesn’t seem to fit anymore.  We are left to dissolve that mythological image of a Spiritual Ego.    We drop it.   With that the spiritual ego dissolves, we become more humble.  We become authentic.  We begin to experience a new kind of peace and happiness free of the myths in our mind.

These are some of the steps you may face on your Pathway To Happiness.

You will find an outline of practical exercises and practices for identifying and changing your core beliefs in the Self Mastery course. It’s an audio program that you can download and listen to.   The first 4 sessions are free.

Gary

The problem didn’t start here.  There’s been tension for years.  Three years ago he looked out into the future and realized that at a certain point the kids would be moved out and it would just be the two of them.  He thought he should do something to improve the situation and get closer with his wife as there wasn’t much connection there.  Attempts to communicate and share lead nowhere.  His efforts to be more affectionate were rebuked.  He would try to talk and she didn’t want to.  After years of failing you just stop trying.  Wanting some kind of connection, and not finding it at home he began perusing the internet.  This led to more problems with his wife.

When Jake is in his townhome he’s afraid of being alone and not having anyone for the rest of his life.  Old patterns of jealousy from high school resurfaced.   Late at night his head is filled with annoying thoughts about what she is doing.  He feels compelled to get in his car and drive over to her house (his old house).  As an engineer he is intellectually smart enough to know it is silly.  At the same time, there are forces of emotion driving him to behaviors he doesn’t want to do.  He goes back to his small townhouse, and is sad at the direction of his new life.  He longs for a happier time with his wife.  If only she would open up to him he hopes.  That would change everything.

Jake is considering the financial costs of divorce.  He doesn’t like it.  On top of that, he’s feeling that his 13 year old daughter is being corrupted by what his wife is telling her.   He is being made out to be the bad guy.  Jake shares all this and then asks me, “What should I do?”

“Would you like a silver bullet solution to the problems?”  I ask.

“Yes,” he says with hope.

We hope for such an answer.  As we hope, we focus all our attention on that fantasy of how life could be different if only…. (fill in the blank… with some bit about how we or someone else should be different than they are).

I tell Jake, “You have a Tree Problem.”

“What?”  he says with a sense of confusion.

“You have a Tree Problem,” I say again as if that explains everything.

“I don’t understand,” Jake replies. “What do you mean I have a Tree Problem.”

My little diversion trick is working.  His focus has shifted a tiny bit to my comment and with it his emotions have changed. His attention is no longer fixated completely fixed on his problem.   He’s off balance with my little Judo response and that makes it easier to move him a bit further.  Curiosity and confusion is a big step away from sadness and hopelessness.  It’s also a better state to make changes and work on things from.  He’s already taken two steps out of feeling trapped and hopeless and he hasn’t realized it yet.

I begin to explain the “Tree Problem”.

If you have a big tree in your backyard and you want to get rid of it, can you go over to it and push it out?  No.  You will push and push, make your self tired and after a while you will feel defeated.  You will conclude that you are not strong enough, a failure, feel overwhelmed, and that it is hopeless.  That tree is too big with all it’s branches, not to mention it is also rooted to the ground.  But what if you get an ax?  Maybe it is a dull ax.  You hack away at the trunk and spend all day and make it half way through.  You might look at that tree and conclude that you haven’t accomplished a thing because the tree is still there.  It’s a poor assessment of progress but it is the a common misinterpretation we make when working on our own issues.

What if you got a file for your ax?   Your ax would be sharper and you might have gotten it down in the first day.  You wouldn’t have gotten it down in the first swing, but maybe in the first day.  For a really big tree, maybe it would take a couple days.  Of course a chain saw would be faster.  Perhaps it comes down in a few minutes.  But with a chain saw you need other items as well.  You need a sharp chain and that requires a different kind of file.  You’ll need oil to lubricate the chain and gasoline to run the chain saw. It might take a bit more work to get the tools and equipment, but you could take the tree down faster.  Of course there is fear in making such changes.  What if in making all these changes the tree falls on our house.  There’s fear in solving a tree problem because there’s going to be consequences in other areas of our life.

Now even if you get that chain saw and fell that big tree in your backyard the job isn’t done.  It’s laying on the ground and it’s too big to move.  So you take your saw or your ax and you start cutting off the limbs.  You cut the trunk into short lengths.  Then you take your ax and split the large trunk logs into pieces small enough to move.  Once each is piece small enough you can pick it up and move it out of your back yard.  That’s how you solve a tree problem.  You break it down into a bunch of manageable size pieces that you can handle.

If we look at a situation like Jake’s and try to solve it with one stroke or in one day we will feel overwhelmed and helpless.  It can’t be done. We can’t see an solution much less a way to get there.   Often when we face such issues like divorce we are dealing with circumstances and problems we have never faced before.  We do not have the tools or the training to deal with splitting out the finances, addressing the challenges our children, will go through, the emotions we will go through, or the prospect of starting a new life.  We might be educated, successful, professional adults, but we find ourself in a situation we have no tools, training, or experience in handling.  We are facing a tree that doesn’t want to move and we can’t come up with any silver bullet solutions like we are used applying in other areas of our life.  Our silver bullet answers seem to revolve around someone else changing and they don’t seem to want to.

Why is Jake looking for a bullet to address his Tree Problem?  Somewhere in his belief system he assumes there is one.  You can tell because he is looking and asking for one.  It keeps him running in circles chasing a hope filled dream instead of focusing on tools and actions that will work.

That tree isn’t going to be removed by a bullet and the sooner he realizes that the sooner he will stop wasting time looking for one.  It’s an uncomfortable truth to accept, but the pain is very short lived compared to living in never ending hope and frustration that happens when we chase an illusion based answer.

If it was a gopher in his yard maybe it could be solved with one well-placed bullet.  But Jake clearly has a Tree Problem.  There are many different branches.  Coming to terms with the end of his marriage, overcoming his jealousy issues, dividing up the finances, becoming comfortable in his new life, and communicating all these changes to his 13 year old daughter are all branches of the same tree.  It’s going to take more than a week to deal with each branch.

So how do you solve a Tree Problem?

Like hiking to the top of a mountain, one step at a time .  There will be times on the trail you are going up, and times you are going downhill losing elevation.  But even when you seem to be losing elevation you will be moving forward on your path.   Most of the time you won’t be able to see the top where you hope to end up.  You have to have some faith that it will be okay when you get there.  You also can’t imagine what it will look like from up there because you have never been there before.  What you can do is keep taking care of the step in front of you.  Putting one foot in front of the other is how you make a long journey.   One step at a time on your Pathway To Happiness, that’s how you get there.   There are some possibilities for short cuts at times, but you have to be walking on the path to find them.  You’ll often find clues to those short cuts from people who are familiar with the pathway.

So I leave you with a couple clarifying and hopefully practical questions to ask about the challenges and changes you are faced with?

Do you have a gopher problem or do you have a Tree Problem?

And do the type of solutions you are looking for fit the type of problem you have?   If not, are you trapped in a cycle of hope for a quick fix solution and frustration that you can’t find one?  If you realize you are in such a trap then you’ve taken another step on your Pathway To Happiness.

More practical steps are available in the Self Mastery Course, The Relationship Course, and The Self Mastery Advanced Series.

Really?

To that comment I sometimes like to ask two questions,

One:   “In terms of percentage, how far along should you be?”

Two:     “In terms of percentage, how far along are you?”

The assessment without those questions always seems vague and without validation.  When you ask in terms of something specific like percentage, you can narrow down the answer to between 0 and 100.  That by itself is still a lot of choices, but at least the criteria is more specific.  I think it’s easier to answer when you make it specific.  But even when I make it easier like this  people don’t seem to be able to answer.  They don’t know how far along they are and they don’t know how far along they should be.  Yet somehow they “know”, “I’m not as far along as I should be.”

How do they “know”?   It’s really that they have an image in their mind of themselves as a failure and they believe that the image is them. In short,,, they believe it.  What we believe in our mind is what we “know.”  What can be weird about this is that we can “know” something and it still not be true. What we “know” is that we are not as far along as we should be.  We “know” it only because we believe it, whether it is true or not.  We have no real measurement of our progress, or what reasonable progress should look like, but we accept the conclusion as truth.  The result of accepting this idea as truth is that we feel like a failure.

Because the voice in your head thinks something doesn’t mean it has to be true.  Sometimes the voice in our head can tell us things that aren’t truth. When we believe the lies that it says, we are likely to unnecessarily suffer emotionally.

When we believe the voice in our head is telling us the truth, and we feel like we “know” it.  That sense of knowing can give us a feeling of confidence in what we know.  We feel smart in our knowing, even if what we know isn’t true, and makes us unhappy.

Let’s call that voice in our head that is criticizing us the Judge. Sometimes it tells us the truth.  Sometimes it tells us lies.  Sometimes that judge can be so critical it is berating and abusive.  It can drag us back into emotional suffering with its lies.   Because that voice of the Judge has guided us towards success and away from failure in the past we tend to accept what it says as true.  We unconsciously consider it an advisor.  The voice of the Judge tells us we should be farther along and we assume it is somehow helping us.    That’s not the only thing that is happening.

Sometimes when the internal dialog of the Judge is putting us down we justify that it is helping us.  “It’s giving me a good kick so I’ll work harder,”  is the kind of response we defend the Judge with.  Sometimes we accept this defense at face value.  When we do we believe it and now it feels true.  We “know” it.  Except if we look at little closer the explanation starts to fall apart.

What does “further along” really mean.  Further along towards what?   “Further along” really means happier.  “I’m not as far as long as I should be,” translates to:  “I’m not as happy as I should be.”   What does it take to be happier?  Happier means more love.  Love comes in the form of self acceptance and self respect.

The voice of the Judge rejects us.  It is not accepting and it is not respectful of our own well being and yet we defend this criticism as “motivational help.”  We justify that the harder it is on us the more that it is motivating us.  You’d be surprised how often I get this kind of explanation.  The truth is that the more it criticizes us for not being far enough along, the more we reject our self.  The more we believe this voice in our head, the unhappier we are.   So how could this self rejection that the Judge is doing, which is the opposite of self acceptance and self respect possibly be helping us towards happiness?

It can’t.

It’s kind of like this.  The judge is throwing dirt on you when you are not clean enough.  It says, “Hey, you don’t accept your self enough so take this rejection and you will improve our self.   It’s really becomes ridiculous when you are aware of it.  But that’s part of the trick.  You have to shift your perspective to become aware of it.

So what can you do to help your self?  It starts with awareness.  First you need awareness that what you think, may not be true.  Awareness that you don’t always have to believe what you think.  Then, with a little practice, you learn to scrutinize the internal dialog of the Judge and find out that it’s not always helpful.

A few things to consider.

That voice in your head may have been more helpful in the past, but as we get older it gets out of control.  It spends more time berating us than guiding or helping us.  When it comes to self acceptance, respect, love, and happiness,,, it doesn’t have much experience.  Most of what that voice in your head “knows” is about fear. It is constantly telling you what you have to do and should do to avoid what you fear.  The problem with the information it is giving you is that it is based on what it knows from the past.   It assumes that all future experiences will be like the past ones.  We have a very powerful memory, and it distorts how we see the present moment when we believe the internal dialog in our head.

For insights on how to change this dynamic of falling for the self rejection that goes on in your mind Listen and Practice the exercises in the Self Mastery course.  The first 4 sessions are free. Sign up here. You might also want to check out the free audio about self awareness and changing beliefs.

That’s a nice acronym.   It’s catchy.   It’s also not true.

Calling it False Evidence is saying that fear is an illusion or a lie.  Lies are made of words.  Fear is an emotion.

We can create fear as a reaction to believing illusions, lies, or false evidence.  But fear is not the illusion or false evidence.  There is the illusion we imagine in our mind, and then there is the emotion we create as a reaction.  Of course we only react with emotion when we believe it to be real.  It’s that believing part that makes the illusion APPEAR real.   You could say that we make the illusion appear real.   In any case, there is the appearance of things, and then there is how we create emotion as a reaction.

We can also create fear as a reaction to something that is a very real.  If you are flying in an airplane and it has an emergency where it is losing altitude you are likely to feel fear.  You don’t have to panic, but fear is probably going to be there.  The evidence isn’t false.  It’s real and the fear is too.   Evidence is not the same as emotion.  Not all fear is from false evidence, and so our catchy phrase about what fear is false at times.

A person can also come to complete acceptance of their mortality and the letting go of their body when they come face to face with death.  In this case there is evidence of something real like the passing of their body, and yet no fear.  Perhaps that is because in that moment there exists no presence of any illusions about death.  There is a only a complete presence and acceptance of a coming experience for their body.  Without making up any beliefs about death there is no fear.

Fear is not False Evidence.  Nor is Fear Evidence Appearing Real.   We can create fear as  a reaction to false evidence or real experience.  Fear is an emotion we create.  It is often created as a reaction to things, but with enough awareness it doesn’t have to be.

That definition of fear is kind of catchy.  The problem with catchy is there’s usually too much distortion in those catchy phrases.  The phrase about Fear being False Evidence Appearing Real is at least pointing our attention to the fact that we may be reacting to an illusion.  On the other hand,,, the catchy phrase itself is also false and misleading testimony about fear.  The result is that, at best, we are dispelling one illusion in our mind while we are creating another.

For other insights, listen to the Free Audio

For a step by step program in identifying and changing core beliefs, listen to the audio in the Self Mastery Course. The first few sessions are free.

When you ask this question to someone else,,, you are opening the door to giving away your personal power and creating a victim mindset.   This is a dangerous question to ask.  At the same time guidance can be helpful.

In the early stages of our personal development we ask many questions.  In the beginning the questions are general, unfocused, and many times harmful.  We aren’t aware of how powerful a question can be at controlling our attention and occupying our mind with very limited ways of thinking.  Usually we are in a unhappy or confused state when we ask these types of questions.  And the types of questions that arise from this mind set act to reinforce the very emotions we are trying to get out of.       

What are some better questions to ask?

What is the kind thing to do?
What is the respectful thing to do?
What is the compassionate thing to do?
What do I not want?
How will I treat myself?
How will I treat others?
How do I want to feel?

Learning to ask better questions is a skill.  Like any skill it can take time.  However the more we are aware of the questions we ask, the less automatic they are.  The more aware of each question our mind asks, and the automated way our imagination and emotions respond the better we will get at asking questions.

The most common of beginner question is, “What should I do?”   Why is this such a poor question to ask when we are wrapped up in emotional issues?  That question can lead us back into the same negative belief structure that asked it.

The question implies or assumes that there is a particularly “right” answer.  Whenever we are looking for the “right” answer our mind flips into a mode of duality and looks at things in a right/wrong split.  All answers that are not the “right” answer are classified as wrong.  There can be one thousand wrong.  You can imagine a poor outcome with any action you take thereby making the action appear wrong.  All of these with any possible negative outcome are classified as “wrong.”  It is assumed that the “right” or “should” action will result in everything being right and everyone being happy.  It’s a very high standard of perfection that is implied when we use the word “should” or “right.”  

This very high, and often unreasonable expectation sets us up for feeling like a failure.

Having an image of perfection or an expectation in and of itself isn’t the really bad part.  It could even be good when it motivates us to take action or inspire creativity.   The bad part is that the mental construct of an image of perfection sets you up for two rounds of self judgment.

Once you adopt this mental construct of what you “should” do, you also build a self image of the kind of person you should be.  So now there are two images of perfection.  One is of the action that leads to the perfect outcome.  The second image of perfection is more personal. It is of who you should be.  There can be more perfection images in the mind such as, how everyone else should feel, that can complicate this even further, but lets keep it simple for now.

With these two imaginary images the voice of the inner judge now has two concepts it can use for comparison.  With its typical method of comparison there can only be two outcomes.  The best outcome possible is that you meet the expectations of your belief system.  No praise here.  All you did was what was expected of you.  With your greatest effort you broke even by meeting expectations of your belief system.

The second outcome isn’t that kind.  For any lesser action, even the emotional reactions of another person that you can’t control, the inner judge criticizes you.  “I could have (should have” done that differently.”  The second judgment follows the first.  If you didn’t succeed in achieving the image of perfection outcome then you failed.  If you failed, then that means you are a failure.  It’s a simple duality based conclusion the judge and victim voices in your head do automatically.  The result is self rejection in the form of a self judgment.

This self rejection happens in your own head and can be emotionally powerful.  When we are preoccupied trying to answer the question, “What should I do?” our attention is so wrapped up in the importance of figuring out the right thing to do that we don’t see this set up to self judgment.

Why is our attention so wrapped up with figuring out the “right” thing we “should” do?  Somewhere in our sub-conscious belief system we sense that the painful self judgment will come if we do things wrong.  We are afraid of the painful self judgment from our inner judge and we seek to avoid it.   We feel the pressure to get things “right” but don’t notice that much of the motivation is really about avoiding the pain of self judgment that is going to be generated in our imagination.

We feel the pressure from the voices in our head but don’t notice that this is just our imagination and belief system at work.  It usually takes a person a while to realize that this emotional self abuse is optional.   We are so used to self judgment by the time we are adults that we accept this as an unchangeable reality.  Then the only solution to avoid the punishment that we perceive is to get the answer “right.”   And “right” means perfect where everyone is satisfied.  Of course we don’t notice that this standard assumes that everyone will interpret the action and the outcome free from any judge and victim perspectives.  (not likely)

It can be very helpful to seek help, guidance, and support.  However we can help our self more when we are mindful of the questions we ask and how their underlying assumptions can be setting us up for self judgment.

Be Mindful When Asking for Help

I’m all for advice.  I like to pick the brains and perspective of seasoned individuals that have proven results in an area.  It can save us a lot of time in learning so we don’t have to figure everything out on our own.  What I am not in favor of is collecting of images of perfection that the inner judge uses as an expectation to measure our self worth.  The next time you ask someone, “What should I do?” take a moment to notice whether your inner judge might use their answer in a conspiracy of self-judgment against you.

Please don’t ask me to give you advice about what you “should” do.  I probably won’t answer you directly.  If I answer your question in the format you expect, then I am providing you with an image of a perfection for an outcome that may or may not be achievable.   You are asking an image of perfection that the inner judge can use.   I’m probably going to try to do you the favor of not feeding this structure of beliefs.  My answer might come back as a question or redirect your attention to looking at the situation differently.

Some people will have a reaction to this.  They will get upset because I haven’t answered directly.  They are so fixated on getting things “right” that they feel cheated when avoid the trap their belief system is making.   I know that person is upset because their only hope to avoid painful self judgment is to get the answer of what they “should” do.  And any delay in getting that answer has them slipping further into the jaws of the self judgment for getting it “wrong.”

I apologize for not answering directly.  But I’m not trying to satisfy your hope of getting things right.  I’m actually trying to save you from a much bigger problem. The bigger problem is that painful self judgment and the fear it creates drives the mind to believe that the “right” answer is the only hope.

Please don’t ask me to conspire with the trap your belief system creates with  self judgments.  At the same time, it is okay and even advisable in most situations to seek counsel and guidance.  Just do your best to be aware and avoid this trap of self judgment.

If you have another question,,, a better question,,, I might give a more direct answer.  Look back to the beginning of this article for some ideas on how to ask a better question.  If these questions don’t apply, then ask other questions.  If you can’t come up with another question then ask, “What questions should I be asking?”    There are lots of ways that you can get help, support and guidance from people through sticky situations without building images of perfection that the judge will use.   
There are lots of questions that I work on asking that will help you to look at the situation differently.  There is a lot that can be done with perspective and inquiry that is extremely helpful without anyone telling you what you should do.

So if I don’t respond to your question of, “What should I do?” in a way that you expect then I hope this explains it.   I’m not trying to give you ice cubes so the pain from the fire stops.  I’m trying to help you put out the fire that you are sitting in.

Some people define faith as a belief in something for which they have no evidence for.  Others think of faith as a set of religious beliefs.  These are limited uses and understanding of faith.  Faith is a force.  Think of it as a life force energy that you direct, consciously or unconsciously.  It is a force you use every day.   People and use faith every day in ways that are very real and practical but hardly notice.  This force of faith that you use has profound impact on your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

People use faith when they exchange money. A dollar has value largely because people believe it has value.  People have invested faith in the idea that dollars can be traded for food, gas, clothing, services, and other things.  Because other people also have faith in this same use of money it works and appears to be truth.

We put our money in a bank because we have faith that a bank is a safe place for our money.  When people have fear and doubts about the safety of that bank their faith dissolves. Or, more specifically, they invest faith in the idea that the bank is unsafe. Then they withdraw their money.  If enough people withdraw their money from a bank, it can collapse.  Even if the bank is solvent it can collapse because people no longer have enough faith in the bank. You could say that the strength of a bank is more dependent on faith of people than the actual balance sheet of the bank.

The price of a stock is largely determined by faith.  People will value and pay for a stock dependent on what is their BELIEF.   Faith is the force that makes that belief strong.  If people lose their faith in that company, then they sell their stock.  The action of selling stock is determined by where they invest their faith.  The value of a stock is determined by the faith people have in the value of a company stock.  You could say that the whole stock market is held up by the power of the faith people have in its overall worth.  That’s why prices of stocks and the whole market can change so quickly.  When people shift what they have their faith in things can change quickly.  When you change what beliefs you have invested faith in your life can change very quickly.

The value of stock, a piece of real estate, a dollar, euro, or peso is largely a matter of faith.  They are worth what people “believe” they are worth.  Only when other people believe the same thing does that belief appear real.   When people no longer put the force of their faith behind the value of a stock the price falls.   More precisely we can say that they have taken their faith out of the “idea” that the stock’s value.  People don’t invest their faith in a stock, but rather in the idea of a stock’s value.  Then they put their money in the stock based on how much faith they invested in the idea of value for that stock.  If you see this relationship it becomes clear that our actions are based on the power of faith we have invested in ideas.

Faith Impacts How We Feel

Faith in yourself can give you a feeling of confidence. If you believe that you can do something, you have faith in your ability and you produce a feeling of confidence.  When you doubt your ability, you are also investing faith.  You invest your faith in the ideas and images that you will fail, and that people will judge you.  When you put faith in those ideas and images you create emotions of fear or insecurity.  In both cases, you are expressing the energy of faith.  It is just that you express it into different conceptual ideas, outcomes, and self-images and this produces different emotions.

Suppose you did something in your past and later wish you hadn’t done it. If you invest faith in that idea then you will create emotions of guilt.  If you invest faith in the idea that you are a bad person for what you have done then you will create emotions of shame.  Guilt is an emotion based in something you have done, while shame is an emotion based in a belief about what you are.  The strength of the emotions you feel will depend on how much faith you have in these ideas about your self.   With the force of faith you can create these emotions within your self even if the story is not true.   But by creating these feelings the story will feel true.

Most everything you feel about yourself derives from the faith you invest in various ideas about yourself. Two people could have the same experience of hardship and failure, but invest their faith in opposite interpretations about what would happen next time.  One might believe he will fail again, while the other person might invest faith in the idea that she will do better next time because of her commitment or what she learned.   Failure didn’t determine how a person felt, but rather what ideas they invested their faith in did. Each person is using the energy of faith and investing it in one belief or another about themselves and the future.  Each creates a different belief system, and produces different emotions.  One person will become more focused committed and feel confident,,, the other will generate insecurity.  The action that each person takes from then on will be congruent with where they have invested their faith.

If you are feeling emotions of fear, shame, guilt, and unhappiness, it is because you have invested faith in conceptual ideas that create these emotions.  The ideas that are in your head and your self images are not the truth.  But if you invest faith in them they will produce emotions and create the feeling of being real.  The emotions you create with your faith are real, but the images and ideas of your beliefs are not.    If you want to change how you feel one of the things you will have to learn to do is divest your faith from these false beliefs.

In recovering the power of your faith from these false beliefs not only will your level of happiness change, but your actions and behavior will changes as well.  Another benefit of recovering your faith from these false beliefs is that you will then have the personal power to choose a new set of beliefs and take the actions to create a new life based on what you really want.

Learning how to gain control over the force of your faith is something that the Self Mastery course will help you do.