That’s often the question as one is working through their issues of limiting beliefs, fears, emotional reactions, or sabotaging behaviors.  Always the question, “How long will it take?”

It’s difficult to answer because it depends on many factors.  Sometimes the issue is simple, like a case of jealousy.  Other times a person is working to change a life long pattern of victimization and judgment filled with emotions of resentment and anger.   If that is behind a reaction of jealousy, then it will take them a bit longer as the belief structure has built up over more years and is larger.

Then there is the factor of how much time and energy you direct to the matter of change.  If you do ten minutes a day, it might take ten years.  But if you do an average of an hour a day of practices, it might only take a year.  How did doing six times the work cut down the length of time by a factor of 10?  It’s because at 10 minutes a day of change you still have 15 hrs and 50 min of your waking day reinforcing old patterns.  At an hour a day of the awareness work you have almost an hour less of reinforcement.  Not only are you doing more new healthy actions, but you are doing less of the emotionally unhealthy behaviors.

So how long will it take?  It will take a certain number of hours.  You can put those hours in early and be done sooner, or you can do just a few minutes a day of change work and have it take many years.

It’s like learning to read, dance, fly an airplane, or play a musical instrument.  All of these things will take a certain number of hours before you reach a level.  If you want to go further and master more emotional skills and more of your beliefs, it will take more hours.  The critical way to measure how long it will take is by how many hours you spend practicing, not the days or weeks of the process.  If it takes 100 hours to break through a set of limiting beliefs you can do it in 5 weeks, or you can do it in 5 years.   Either way it will take you the same number of hours.

So to answer the question about, “How long will it take before I see the changes I want?”

The answer is a certain number of hours.

As we work to stay consciously aware and maintain positive emotions of happiness we can become tired of the process.  When that happens, the thought, “Sometimes it just feels like it would be easier to give up,”  may appear.   Let’s be honest, that’s what we think some times.  Or,, perhaps it is the ego part of our mind telling us that.

Should we believe that thought, that is the question?

There’s a part of the statement about it being easier that is true.  And there is a part of this statement that is false, or a lie as I like to call them.  It’s all in how you interpret it.  One of the problems is that our mind accepts both interpretations without realizing what they are.  The result is that we acknowledge the truth and bury ourselves deeper in the lie at the same time.   I’ll thin slice this thought and illustrate the layers of what is both a truth, and a lie at the same time in the same thought.

Trying to stay consciously “awake” and not fall into the automatic reactions dictated by the programmed negative thoughts running through our mind is hard.  It takes work to stay “awake.”   You have to consciously focus your attention, be aware and mindful of what’s going on with your thoughts, emotions, point of view, and consciously choose if you are going to believe each thought or not.   It is a mental discipline and it takes work to maintain this awareness.  At least it is work in the beginning.  Once you have dug your self out of the emotional hole, it’s not much effort at all.

But in the beginning, we sometimes we get tired of all that mental work and discipline.  What get’s tired is our will.  We have to exercise our will power to stay consciously aware.

What is will power?  It’s like a muscle we use to concentrate with, or focus our attention.  We can apply it to conscious awareness, but we can also apply it to reading, physical exercise, and other activities.  Applying that internal force to focus your attention or push your body is what I call will power.  It acts like a muscle and as you use it, it gets stronger.

However, just like any muscle, our will power can become fatigued by use in the short term.  When it does it needs to rest, recharge, and then it is ready to be used again.  When you exercise this muscle of will power, it will need rest in the short term.  But the more you use it the stronger it gets in the long term.

So if you have been working hard to stay conscious and not slip into negative thinking, you might notice that after a while your muscle of willpower becomes fatigued.  It is then difficult to maintain your focus and awareness.  Depending on how rested you are, and how much you have developed your will power muscles through practice, it might be 1 hour of refrain that exhausts you.  If you are more practiced perhaps it is one day, or one week of avoiding the temptations of negative thoughts that tires you out.  In any case, at a certain point you need to rest and recharge your will power muscle.  When our will power muscle is tired is sometimes when the thought, “It would just be easier to give up” comes along.

Now a certain interpretation of this statement is true.  Your will power muscle is tired and it needs to rest.  If you were at the gym lifting weights and holding up the bar on the bench press for a while, at a certain point you would think, “this would be easier if I put this down.”  It is true that it would be easier.  However, if you held that weight up there a little longer, you would be using those muscles and they would become stronger as you pushed them past previous levels.  And if you did, the statement, “It would be easier if I put this down,” would even be more true.  But after pushing your self, at a certain point you would need to let the bar down.  You can only grow that muscle so fast.  It needs time to rest in between.  After your muscles rest they are ready to go again.

When you were young and first learning to walk your legs would get tired after only a few steps.   Once they did, it became easier to sit down, or crawl.  So the truth is that at a certain point it is easier to crawl than to walk.  But that isn’t always true.  It’s just true for a short time, and then it isn’t true once your muscles are rested.

After a while your legs got rested, and you probably became tired of crawling.  At that point you tried to walk again.  Maybe you made it a few more steps, and then you had to sit down.  Perhaps you would resort to crawling the rest of the day.  Tomorrow you would try standing and walking again. Over years of practice and strengthening you are able to walk or run for miles with a quicker recovery time.

The phrase, “Sometimes it would just be easier to give up,” is a true statement if we interpret that it applies to the short term.  It means that I need to give my muscles a rest, recharge my energy, my muscles, and my will power for now.

However, if you interpret the same statement to mean, “Giving up for good on being consciously aware, and happiness would be easier”, then that is a completely different meaning.  One by my experience that isn’t true.   If we applied that logic to learning to walk, we would have concluded that it was easier to crawl.  Yes it takes effort to learn to walk.  However, imagine living your life and getting around by crawling all the time.  It’s a lot more work to crawl to get somewhere, and not nearly as fast as walking.  And if you didn’t learn to walk you would never learn to run.  So not only is crawling more work,,, it is slower.

So sticking with crawling and not learning to walk in the short term is easier.  There is an effort you have to exert to learn to walk.  However, not exerting the effort to learn at all, means a lot more work throughout your whole life.  It’s a lot easier to walk for the rest of your life, but you have to put forth some effort to learn how.  So it is with consciously being aware and happy. It takes exerting some effort and practice to learn to be consciously aware and happy, but easier for the rest of your life.

To gain the skills on working through tricky lies like this one, and other self sabotaging limiting beliefs, try the free sessions in the Self Mastery Course. 
A video about self discipline, self control, fatigue, decision making, and how our will power needs to be restored after it is spent.

One of the clues that inroads are being made on your belief system and emotions is when the Judge and Victim really complain about this work.  They will tell you things like it isn’t working and it is a waste of time one day.  The next day they will say that you aren’t doing it enough and because of that you are a failure.  That’s an effort on their part to get you to quit.   These are completely opposite stories that contradict themselves, but the Judge and Victim don’t seem to notice the flaws in their logic.

The first assumes that the course is a waste and that you have better things to do with your time.  The second is that the material is really worthy, but since you aren’t doing it, then you are a waste and shouldn’t even bother trying.  Interesting when you start seeing this stuff,,, I think anyways.

So when it comes to measuring progress and noticing resistance, you might listen to what the Judge and Victim characters have to say on the matter, and assume that the exact opposite is happening.  That might be closer to the truth.

Hello Gary, I’ve been visiting your site often over the past weeks, and I’m on the second session in your Self-Mastery program. I’ve listened to most of your free audio already.

My experience with spirituality thus far can best be described through the image of an abusive relationship. I can’t leave it now, but I feel it’s done more harm than good, or to phrase it more accurately, my mind has used it against me more often than not. It started about a year ago when I picked up and read the book “Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” I’m 19 and a year ago I couldn’t have cared less about spirituality, but when I put down that book, I experienced a powerful episode of existential depression. It is the most acute emotional pain (fear) I can remember feeling. Of course, the irony is apparent on paper, but you are probably familiar with the tricks of the mind, which I am beginning to learn for myself. Despite trying to forget all about “awareness” and “waking up” (which filled my mind with a sense of both urgency and dread) I was compelled to read more on this subject, eventually reading lots of authors and teachers including Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts. The probable cause for this is that I’m stuck in my life, GED in hand but procrastinating leaving home ad infinitum, with no job and two “wasted” years of doing nothing and knowing no-one my age. Reading lots of books in the hope one will “click” and solve my problems was the most likely motivator. I absorbed lots of useless knowledge but resisted the actual practice.

This tendency of my mind to turn the only cure into the enemy is a cause of a lot of anxiety and frustration in my life. Thankfully, I’m not as resistant to change as I once was, after visiting your site. I think you described it perfectly, I was trying to destroy the house I was standing in, without having another house to live in. The result is that more walls go up, even in completely ridiculous places, as I have described above. I had no idea what would be left after an “awakening” so I had all sorts of doubts and fears about becoming a different person, estranging myself from the rest of humanity, or eliminating my desire for self-expression. This desire is very close to my heart, I’m a very artistic and creative person, so I had major reservations about dissolving my identity, especially at an age where the very thing I’m expected to be doing is making one. The result? One confused and depressed teenager. :)

The closest thing to meaning I’ve ever had in my life is a feeling, the feeling I get when I get completely absorbed in music, a movie, a book or art of any kind. You know, when people talk about being “transported” when they listen to something so moving it can’t be expressed in words. I have no idea if this feeling is what those monks in India are looking for, or what spiritual teachers are talking about. All I knew is that I didn’t want to lose that. If that’s the house to go live in while I break down my fears then I’m packing my bags and moving in right away. But the mind has it’s ways, and would convince me that I was just fooling around in illusion, and that this feeling was to true spirituality as Coca-Cola is to spring water.

Sometimes I would sit and think, and realize I was being ridiculous, and experience relief. But the next day the depression and uncertainty would be back. The same resistance to change, the resistance to meditation, the resistance to anything that felt good. I became very cynical about my desires. I felt that I shouldn’t have them, or that they would just lead to suffering. I’m pretty sure I swallowed some bad advice along the road, or at the very least, made the mistake of not having a guide in this process. If the average spiritual seeker has positive associations around the words “nothingness,” “non-being,” and “detachment,” I was the opposite.

I could go on and on but you get the idea. I just don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I have a hunch that this is because I don’t listen to myself anymore, I’ll take anyone’s opinion but mine. It’s like brainwashing, or that’s what it feels like. I could always convince myself to be unhappy. It became so painful that I’m just now starting to get out of it, finally, with the help of your materials. You teach in a way that makes more sense to me, that’s more practical and less vague.

Any advice would be appreciated! If nothing else I hope this email can give you more insight into how self-defeating the mind can become, perhaps someone else will benefit from this, as I haven’t been able to just yet. Anyways, great site, I’m looking forward to the next session, and I’m now practicing with an open heart. Wish me luck!

Hi Existential,

Thanks for your email.  I know your situation and it isn’t comfortable.  Even if the clarity of your writing is refreshingly clear and insightful on your situation,,, it’s still emotionally binding.

Dear Gary

I listened to your first Self Mastery session on Gratitude and I don’t think it will help me.  In it you use the trigger question to remind our selves what we are grateful for by asking, “What are you most grateful for?” 

The problem that I have with that question Gary is I am not grateful for anything. I have been victimized my whole life–from childhood, all the way to now. At least, that is my perception as I see it at this moment in time. I am going through a very, very angry and bitter stage in my adult life. My sister and I are survivors of incest. I was the victim of a false rape accusation — though the truth did come out at trial and I was found not guity; but my reputation and my livelihood as of right now due to the internet where anybody can say anything about anybody with n0 repercussions has been ruined.   My sanctionary Gary is nature: love of animals, hiking in the woods, and the mountains have truly been my saving grace. If this wasn’t available to me–I would have been dead long ago. Any suggestions you have for a wounded animal like myself, (and I have been victimized), would be greatly appreciated. I will pay for them if I have to, with love

R. G. 

Hi R. G.

I’m confused…. I get this statement in the beginning.
The problem that I have with that question Gary is I am not grateful for anything.

and later I get this ….
My sanctionary Gary is nature: love of animals,  hiking in the woods, and the mountains have truly been my saving grace. If this wasn’t available to me–I would have been dead long ago. 
Can both these statements be true?   

Or maybe I read the fist line wrong.  I read it as “there’s nothing I have to be grateful for.”  When it’s really meant the way you wrote it. “I am not grateful for anything.”  Even though you have something to be grateful for.   So is there a contradiction here or did I miss something?

If I am confused here,,,, and you mean something else, then please explain.

Gary

Dear Gary,

Your right, there is a contradiction in my statement. I guess I am grateful for the sanctionary thay I have access to. Great point!

Dear R. G.

We lie to our self and we lie to others.

Shawn Anchor explains how some of our beliefs about happiness and work may be backwards.  One important point he makes is that we should not delete the statistical outlier when it comes to happiness.  When actually, what we really should be noticing is the person who is happier than others, beyond any reasonable average. When it comes to achieving happiness, we should not be looking to achieve a statistical average.

“I’m a fat slob.  I’ve got to lose 20 lbs.  I’ll never be able to do it.  It’s too much. Maybe I’ll just go for a walk and start there. No!  That won’t do it.  That’s not enough.  You need more than that. You need to go for a run, a big run, a 10 mile run. If you workout really hard you can have a lean sculpted body.  You can even have six pack abs.   That’s what you need to do.  When you get fit like that you’ll feel awesome.

But you are going to need to watch what you eat too.  No more sugar, no more caramel macchiato coffee drinks.  No more desserts.  No more beer either, so stay away from happy hour after work and any social life with your friends.  You need to take this training seriously or not at all.

 No social life, no relaxing with a glass of wine, no wonderful desserts?  Just work and workouts? That’s no fun.  I think I’ll feel deprived of all the stuff I enjoy.  I’ll be miserable if I do that.  I don’t want that. Maybe I’ll just get some potato chips and see what is on TV.”

Then it starts again,,, from the beginning.  “I’m a fat slob.”

(Repeat from above)

The circular thinking resulted with my client on the couch watching television for a number of weeks.  Why are we trapped in unhealthy cycles like this?  It’s a function of our fear based and false beliefs.  These beliefs are lies.   Damn Lies.

When you look closer and study the beliefs held within these words you’ll see what holds this self destructive cycle together.  You’ll see how these thoughts lead our attention and look at certain things and not others.  How our attention goes into certain thoughts and builds whole imaginary dreams out of them.  Then we have emotional reactions to those imaginary dreams, and those emotional reactions cause more thoughts that take hold of our attention again.

I’m a fat slob.

It’s a self judgment: a verbal self rejection using the image of the body as a basis for self worth.  Basing our self worth on our body is an assumption and is the first lie.   Our self worth doesn’t have to be based on our body, but if it is, and you judge your body, you end up feeling emotions of unworthiness.   It’s a damn lie. But we can still create a lot of emotions by believing imagined lies.

I’ve got to lose 20 lbs. 

Maybe that emotional feeling of unworthiness is painful.  Maybe it hurts so much that you get motivated to change it.  So you decide to lose 20 lbs so you feel better about your self.   The problem here is that it wasn’t what your body looked like that made you feel bad.  What created the feeling of unworthiness was believing the lie about your self worth.  That was on top of the other lie of self being related to what your body looks like.

The proposed solution to feeling bad is to change our body even though it didn’t cause us to feel bad.  We lie to our self about the solution and change how we feel by changing what our mind is judging.  We believe changing our physical appearance will change how we feel emotionally. (Lie)  Our physical appearance can be amazing, but if we still believe a judgmental thought, our sense of worthiness doesn’t change at all.  But we get lulled into the effort of changing our body and ignore what goes on in our mind.  (more illusions)

I’ll never be able to do it.  It’s too much.

When we think of making a change our mind can imagine the shift in one step.  That’s not how change actually happens, but that’s why we call it imagination.  Because the imagination produces the new result immediately it didn’t fill in the actual action steps.  The mind has produced an illusion of success.  There is no plan with a step by step approach with time to execute it.  Without a scenario of how to get there, our common sense awareness kicks in and tells us the result looks impossible.  We conclude that the change is too much to do in one step.  Our conclusion is a truth, but it’s based on the lie of doing it in one step. So our thought becomes, “It’s too much.”   Our emotions go to failure and defeat.

Maybe I’ll just go for a walk and start there.

We back up and catch our self.  We begin to piece together some steps to get to our final goal of losing 20 lbs. (or whatever the amount you have I mind.)  We have a start and perhaps develop a sense of hope and possibility.

No!  That won’t do it.  That’s not enough.  You need more than that.

This thought came from a tyrannical voice of authority.  It was the side of Ben’s personality that was serious about getting things done.  It’s the voice in his head he puts in charge of hard projects requiring commitment.  There was some truth to what it said, and that made the rest of the thoughts hard to recognize as a lie.  Yes it was going to take more than one walk to get to the goal.   But it ignores the long term plan with many small steps necessary to complete a long journey.  The truth is that just getting off the couch and going for a walk might be enough to start with.

You need to go for a run, and a big run, a 10 mile run.

Here the tyrannical voice throws out another over reaching goal.  It wants’ to start off with a level of training Ben was at two years ago when he was doing a lot of training.  It’s one that isn’t going to be achieved so it’s a set up for failure.  The flag for the lie here is the word “NEED.”  Ben doesn’t need to go for a run and he certainly doesn’t need to do a 10 mile run.  That’s more likely to be self abusive and injure his body instead of make him healthier.

If you workout really hard you can have a lean sculpted body.  You can even have six pack abs.   That’s what you need to do. 

Here the conversation of voices in Ben’s head goes from abusive tyranny to a sales job.  It’s a beautiful story and it has a happy ending with lots of self images of the ego getting stroked in the process.  The salesman is trying to be his friend and get him on board with the lofty goals.  This illusion takes Ben’s attention away from the present moment and putting his shoes on for a walk.

When you get fit like that you’ll feel awesome. 

This is dangling a carrot out there and telling him his emotions of happiness are dependent on what his body looks like.  It’s a carrot made of good feeling emotions.  All it actually does is reinforce the NEED to run 10 miles story with and make it emotionally appealing so we want to believe the lie.  This is what I’ll call a damn lie.  It’s a lie that makes Ben feel good but has no basis in anything real.  It’s most dangerous because it cloaks the others lies behind this emotionally appealing self image.  It’s setting the goals too high and leads to disappointment. If we buy into the salesman’s pitch here we will have overspent on expectations.

But you are going to need to watch what you eat too.  No more sugar, no more caramel macchiato coffee drinks.  No more desserts.  No more beer either, so stay away from happy hour after work and any social life with your friends.  You need to take this training seriously or not at all. 

If we bought the lie the salesman was selling we feel committed now.  The underlying assumption is that it would be wrong to back out on our commitments.  That’s a lie too, mostly because what we are committed to are stories in the mind.  Once the salesman has got us on the hook with those feel good emotions that it linked to a fit body, it starts pushing for more.  Now it’s not enough to be committed and to run 10 miles at the first work out.  Now you have to give up everything else you enjoy in order to get that fit body.  The salesman just raised the price you have to pay before you can feel good.  Ben would be better off just going for a walk, but that’s not what the lies in his head tell him.

No social life, no relaxing with a glass of wine, no desserts?  Just work and workouts,,, that’s no fun.  I’ll feel deprived of so much I enjoy.  I’ll be miserable if I do that.  I don’t want that. 

There’s a truth in this lie as well.  You rightly figured out the salesman’s voice in your head raised the price and it was too high.  He wanted you to make your self miserable by going to an austerity plan living a fanatical lifestyle of workouts.  Truthfully this is too high a price.  Ben is not deciding to train for a triathlon.  However, the rejection of the extreme lifestyle is a general rejection of, “I don’t want to do “THAT.”   What is the “that” he is rejecting?  It’s called a healthy lifestyle.  The tricky lie is that the salesman bundled healthy lifestyle with a fanatical one.  We are saying NO to the fanatical part, but in the process we are unaware that our mind is throwing out moderate exercise and eating as well.  Another damn lie where the stuff we don’t want got mixed in with the lifestyle we do want.   Without awareness we throw out everything by believing the thought, “I don’t want that”.

Maybe I’ll just get some potato chips and see what is on TV.

When we consider the lies of a fanatical workout and social austerity lifestyle, our mind dreams an unhappy life.  Our natural instinct is to look for something that will make us happier.  At this point watching TV and eating potato chips looks like a good idea.  When we try it on in our imagination it feels a lot better than the last option.  It’s another damn lie that feels better.   We feel better for the moment but that’s only compared to an imaginary nightmare where we have no friends, no social life, and no fun.  The previous ugly scenario makes the couch feel like a relatively better lie.  It doesn’t feel genuinely good, just not as worse.  It’s also an illusion that distracts us from any small healthy steps like taking a walk and having a piece of fruit.

Of course that distraction only lasts until another familiar voice in Ben’s head proposes that he is overweight and should get off the couch.  The end result is that Ben’s imagination is running laps in a circle, but his body doesn’t get taken for a walk around the block.

If you want to get out of such a loop, then you need to get out of those lies, and damn lies.  How so you do that?  Become so aware of what is going on in your mind that you are able to see the lies in there for what they are.  When you are aware that the thoughts in your head are lies, you won’t believe them anymore.  Sometimes it’s not enough to have an opposing belief, or to try and think something else.  This does make pre-existing lies go away.  Just like the story above, these only moved Ben’s attention on to something else.

What helps to get rid of these types of lies is to become aware of the assumptions they are built on, and notice the lies within these assumptions.  That’s what I tried to do above.  I broke down each thought so you could see the underlying false beliefs (lies) they were built on. When you not only see a thought as a lie, but know WHY it is a lie, you are much less likely to fall for that tricky voice in your head the same way.

There are practical steps to learn how to do this in the Self Mastery course. 

Any good tool, technique, practice, or philosophy, can help you out of suffering and into greater happiness and love. And when that tool, technique, practice, or philosophy is taken too far, it can become a dogmatic trap that creates unhappiness and suffering. That dual edged sword applies to the tools, techniques, and practices I teach as well.  The Buddhists refer to this dynamic as a “Near Enemy.”

A hammer can pound a nail so you can hang your picture.  Miss the nail and you hurt your finger.  A skill saw or table saw can cut that piece of wood just right and help you build a house.   But if you cut a board the wrong length it costs you time, money, and you have a pile of waste.  That same saw helping you build your house can also take off a finger.

Tools can help you build a home and everything in it so you are warm and comfortable.  They can also hurt you if you mishandle those tools.  There are techniques you apply to changing your beliefs and emotions so you can be happier.  Take them too far, or misuse them, and you hurt your self or others unnecessarily.

Acceptance vs. Boundaries

The practice of acceptance can allow you to be gentle with your self.  It’s a new inner communication softening the words of the inner critic and even dissolving them completely.  It’s a way to relax internally that you feel physically and emotionally.   If taken further you dissolve judgmental criticisms in your mind about other people.  This can relieve you of lots of toxic thoughts and emotions in your head.  If you take the practice of acceptance too far you allow people to be disrespectful to you and take advantage of you. You avoid putting up boundaries with abusive critical people when it is called for.

Then, when you feel the emotional consequence of the other party’s disrespect, your overdeveloped faith in the acceptance tool tells you that you aren’t doing it right.  You should be more accepting of people who disrespect you.  You end up telling your self, “If I was just more accepting of them and myself then their words wouldn’t bother me so much.”  Self judging words inflict more emotional harm.  This is the result when you try harder with a tool that you have already taken too far.

It is a fine point of balance to stand in acceptance of your self where you are in your journey while you push forward with changes on your emotions and beliefs.  You will probably cross over this balance point many times before you stabilize on it.   That’s just part of the practice.

Left or Right?  Which way do I go?

More than once people have pointed out what seemed to be contradictions or problems with the tools I share.  Often the problem is that the understanding of the practice has been exaggerated or taken too far and is no longer helpful.   Being mindful that any practice or technique can be taken too far and it becomes harmful will help you be more skillful in your practice.

One student complained to his teacher, “A while back you said I should do more of A.  and now you are saying that I should do more of  B.   That’s almost the exact opposite of A.  I think you are contradicting your self.   The teacher responded, “Yes I did tell you those things.  That’s because last month you were veering too far off the path to the right.  So I told you to come left.  Now you are veering too far left and leaving the path so I’m suggesting you move more to the right.”

Work Ethic vs. Rest and Play

Lisa has a well developed work ethic.  She applies it to everything.  When she took on my Self Mastery program she went at it with the same work ethic she applied to her education, her job, and her triathlon training.  She made a lot of progress fast.  She saw a lot of amazing changes within her self and changes in her relationships and her life.  That inspired her to work the program harder.  Her discipline and consistent focus of time and attention was reaping rewards.  However as hard as she worked, some issues still hadn’t changed.

A conversation with Lisa revealed that no matter how hard she worked, she still wasn’t getting there as fast as she wanted.  “Where do you want to get to?” I asked.

Lisa described an extensive number of big changes she still wanted to make, including achieving levels of emotional mastery.

“What is driving you to push so hard to make those changes?” I asked.

Lisa was quiet for a while and then said, “It seems like it is a critical voice in my head of the inner Judge.”

“And how do you feel when it is beating you up for not working hard enough?” I asked.

Lisa took some time to think and feel into the dynamic.  “I feel like I’m not good enough.  Like I am lazy, like I’m failing,” she said.

“So let me get this straight. There is an image of perfection you have in your mind that your belief system says you should get to.  It’s a  kind of super spiritual ego image.  Your judge is there pushing you to it, criticizing you for not being that image already.  All under the assumption that it knows the time line for how long these changes take.  And the result of believing in the image of perfection, and the inner Judge is that you push your self hard every day, and feel like a failure of a victim while you do it.  Is that about right?”

“That’s about right,” she said.

It turned out that some of the motivation for doing this inner work was being driven by the same judge/victim belief system of suffering that existed in other areas of her life.  A strong work ethic has rewarded her well in life and she should benefit from it.  It seemed she was over using her “go to” tool and in the process abusing her self with it.

Some of Lisa’s work ethic was driven by the harsh critic voice of the inner judge.  The more she followed what it said, the more she reinforced the Image of Perfection beliefs and Victim feelings as well.  The result was that the “hard work” dynamic was reinforcing negative beliefs instead of allowing her freedom from them.

Balance and Moderation

Lisa’s new assignment was to take some time off during the week and have fun. Go do things just for enjoyment and pleasure.  Maybe it was a day off from the inner work, maybe it was an afternoon here and there where she didn’t need to struggle to be “aware.”

At first Lisa resisted this approach thinking she wanted to go faster.

“It will help you to go faster,” I said.  “It’s a different way of accomplishing the same thing.   Right now the strong work ethic approach has been corrupted by judgment and victimization.  It is inflicting emotional suffering which is what we are trying to alleviate.  So it is time to back off that pattern and work on changing those beliefs a different way for now.”

I explained that the new approach of taking time during the week to enjoy your life and have fun is actually a different way to break the pattern of the Judge/Victim beliefs causing  suffering.  When you are laughing, you are not in self judgment or a victim state of suffering.  When you are playing and having fun you are not in a judge/victim state of mind.  When you are enjoying you life you are freeing your self from suffering.  These are all ways to transcend the emotional suffering of the judge/victim mind.  Going out during the week and taking time off to enjoy your life is a direct way to do it.

In one of the early emails you get after signing up for the Self Mastery Course I tell people to make time to have fun.  I think many people over look this point or don’t understand the importance at the time.

Practice all things in balance and moderation.  Any approach, even the “hard work” approach can be taken too far and trip up your steps down your Pathway to Happiness.

Any self help tool or technique can help you to be free of unhappiness.  The same technique can also be misused, abused, and exaggerated and become self destructive to your process.   This is why the Buddhists call them “Near Enemy’s” They start out as your friend and you hold it close.  But if you hold too tightly it becomes distorted or exaggerated enough to become an Enemy that is hurting you.

It will take time to learn how to properly use the many different techniques effectively.  You will no doubt misuse some at times, particularly in the beginning.  That’s to be expected and is okay.  The over all use of any practice should help more than hurt.  And with practice you will become more skillful with each exercise so that after a while you don’t use it against your self, or others, at all.

It’s not just practice that will make you a master, but skillful practice will make you a skillful master.  In the beginning things may be a bit clumsy, but so is everyone when they start something new.  The way to solve that is to practice and observe what happens.  Put the tools into action and allow your self the freedom to change how you use them in a way that works for you.  That will help you avoid becoming dogmatic.

As you practice each tool, do so while being aware of the results as best you can.   Be aware that you can take it too far, become too dogmatic, or become too attached to its use.   If you keep each practice in moderation and balance it with skillful use, you can avoid using these tools as Near Enemy’s against your self.

Hope that helps.

Gary

Specific exercises and practices for becoming more mindful and changing beliefs can be found in the Self Mastery Course. The first few sessions are free for you to try.

In summary:  a Near Enemy is a Buddhist term used to describe how the ego distorts a useful spiritual practice into one that causes more suffering.

When we have a vision of how the “perfect” meal should come out we then feel the stress of the difference.  We then feel compelled to make the meal “fit” that image in our mind.  That compulsive feeling appears to be the answer to what will make our stress feel better. When we have an expectation of how someone “should” behave, and they don’t fit that mental image, we create stress.  The answer our distorted belief system proposes to stress is to figure out how to get someone to behave differently.  So we stress some more about coming up with the “right” way to change someone else’s behavior. All the while not paying attention to the other half of the problem,,, our expectations.

The need to control things or other people and make them “perfect” might seem like the solution, but actually it is just another reaction to a previous feeling.

So my suggestion to reducing stress is to first be aware of the need to control and make things “perfect”.  Then shift your attention away from making reality fit a seemingly “fixed” mental image or expectation. Instead, put your attention on that expectation.  Expectations are much easier to change than someone’s behavior, the reality of airline delays or, getting the mashed potatoes just right.  To be flexible give your self more than one option of what would be “okay.”  For practice or fun make it a game and give your self, and the people around you 3 or 4 options.

Stress is a good indicator that you are more attached to the illusion image in your mind than you are being present with the world around you.

Of course it is only easier to change the expectations when you are aware that you have them,,, and that they are not matching up to reality.  Notice that, and you’ll begin to see that you can change the stress you feel by detaching from some of your expectations, and accepting the mashed potatoes just the way they are.

May Blessings to you, family, and friends this season.

Gary van Warmerdam