si dawson

Why do we feel bad?

It's a good question.

An easy answer would be "because bad stuff hap­pens to us", but what for one per­son would be a dis­as­ter, some­one else might barely notice.

So what's actu­ally going on here?

In a nutshell?

We beat our­selves up.

That lit­tle voice in our heads giv­ing us shit. Yep, it's our ego.

No big sur­prise there then. So what can we do about it?

Well, stop com­plain­ing is cer­tainly a good start, but there's more to it than just that.

For exam­ple, how many dif­fer­ent ways are there of beat­ing our­selves up?

Regrets, dis­ap­point­ments, unde­sir­able events, wor­ry­ing about the future, things we dis­like about our­selves, or (even sil­lier) things we dis­like about oth­ers ("Why oh why did I choose a hus­band like this?") That's the cra­zi­est of all. Resent­ment about some­one else is like drink­ing poi­son & expect­ing the other per­son to get sick.

Notice that all of these things are either in the past or in the future? Yep, that's not a sur­prise. More on that later.

A good rule of thumb though? Any time we say some­thing to our­selves that makes us feel worse, that's beat­ing our­selves up, in one way or another.

Ok, so we've mapped out the field, how to deal to this behav­iour? How to stop it?

The Reduc­tion­ist Method
Here's one method that has worked won­ders for me.

Every morn­ing I sat down & brain­stormed a few lists "Things I dis­ap­prove about myself", "Regrets", "Dis­ap­point­ments", "Wor­ries" etc. (You can use any phras­ing that res­onates). Next, I just worked my way down each list I'd made, heal­ing each item in turn. The whole thing would take, 10 maybe 15 min­utes tops.

pic by gwilmore

What I noticed was, each day the lists got shorter, & the items I'd healed didn't come back (or they looked like they came back, but were actu­ally sub­tly dif­fer­ent — i.e. dif­fer­ent sub-aspects of a larger issue).

After a few days, I couldn't think of any­thing for any of the lists. Oh, & I also wasn't think­ing any of those crappy thoughts about myself any more.

The fewer neg­a­tive thoughts you have, the bet­ter you'll feel. It's not rocket science.

Of course, when you're mak­ing these lists, the things that come up first will be the things you're think­ing most often. Those at the top of the list will be the loud­est com­plaints. As you clear those out, you'll nat­u­rally work deeper & qui­eter, till even­tu­ally you're clear­ing out more & more sub­tle neg­a­tiv­ity. It's a great, nat­ural way to clear through inter­nal noise in a way that gets you the great­est ben­e­fits imme­di­ately, but gets more deeply pow­er­ful the longer you continue.

It's also good just to do it a lit­tle bit each day. Often we need a good night's sleep to fully process & clear things out of our systems.

How to heal this neg­a­tive self-talk? Well, you can use what­ever tool appeals to you. Some of the things that came up I used EFT on, some I used the release tech­nique (aka the Sedona Method), & some I used Reiki. I just trusted my intu­ition & used what felt right (mostly releasing).

Our ego has a thou­sand ways of mak­ing us feel bad. Con­stantly nat­ter­ing at us, try­ing to bring us down. This is just a good, time effec­tive way I've found to proac­tively clear out a huge chunk of that crap. Each day get­ting clearer, lighter & happier.

The Holis­tic Method
Ok, so, remem­ber how all this neg­a­tive self talk was either in the future, or in the past? Well, that's not an accident.

Remem­ber Eck­hart Tolle? Well, he's way ahead of me on this one. See, if you're the kind of per­son for whom a method­i­cal approach is just not for you, well, here's what he recommends.

Get your­self com­pletely "in the present." Just be here now.

It's that sim­ple. Let go of all the noise in your head. Stop think­ing your thoughts. If they come up, sim­ply let them go.


pic by savan­nah­grand­fa­ther

The impor­tant thing to remem­ber is — you are not your thoughts. It's your mind think­ing them, not you. Which means you have a choice, seri­ously, whether you want to keep think­ing them or not. As with all things, you always have a choice.

Same thing with any feel­ings that come up. Just observe them, but let them go too.

This way, you stay 100% in the present moment. You can still be going about your day, doing what­ever, but any thoughts & feel­ings that come up from the past or about the future, just let them drift off.

Now, there's a cou­ple of inter­est­ing things about this. Firstly, if you gen­uinely do wel­come up (with­out attach­ment) any thoughts or feel­ings you have, & let go of them fully, they won't come back. (Very loosely, this is how you release).

Be gen­tle with your­self though, because one large issue can often have a ton of lit­tle sub-issues to it that may all need to be cleared. It may seem like you're mak­ing no progress, but just keep let­ting go, keep let­ting go. Pretty soon you'll start to see the difference.

Sec­ondly, the more you can hold your­self in that present moment, the more junk will nat­u­rally come up. Why? Because being in that state holds you in a very spe­cific (very pow­er­ful) state of vibra­tion. Much like shak­ing a dirty glass of water, any­thing counter to that vibra­tion will float to the top. Of course, the impor­tant thing is just to keep let­ting go of every­thing that comes up. You feel bad? Great! Let it go. Nasty thoughts or mem­o­ries? Won­der­ful! Let those go too. They're only com­ing up because they're not in accor­dance with the per­son you're becom­ing, with that pow­er­ful "Now" vibra­tion that you're holding.

It's all good stuff.

Plus, if you're truly present? Well, it's feels great. Best feel­ing in the world. So that's a nice bonus too.

Oh, & there's noth­ing say­ing you can't use both meth­ods — mak­ing lists and being present. Every lit­tle bit helps. As Bud­dha said, "There are many fin­gers point­ing at the moon, but only one moon."