si dawson

experiments in self-improvement

Category: self-improvement

June 22, 2010

How To Never Feel Rejected Again

I’m finding that when I get the same thing occurring in many areas of my life within a very short period of time it’s time for me to learn a very specific lesson.

Recently I found myself feeling rejected, in various ways, in 6 or 7 different situations over the span of a week or so.

Typically it would go something like this:

  1. I’m looking to make a connection with somebody – to spend time, or go see a movie, say.
  2. I get enthusiastic & excited, looking forward to this situation.
  3. They then deny me that connection.
  4. I feel rejected, & disappointed that it’s not happening.
  5. I then react badly (get grumpy, upset, or act coldly towards them, etc)

So then we have two people feeling crappy, instead of one.. that can’t be good!

pic by lady vervaine

I’ve taken to going for monster 3 hour walks while listening to various soothing podcasts. It’s a wonderful way to get exercise and get things clear in my head.

On one of these recent long walks, I had the following realisations:

The key issue with rejection is this – said person is not behaving the way I want them to. I.e., I’m trying to control them.

If you stop and think about it, wanting to control anyone is the height of arrogance. It’s taking away their own free will, not to mention assuming we know better than they do what’s right for them – and how would we feel if someone else tried to do it to us?

So, when that control fails (as, of course, it will – we can’t ever really control anyone else), I then disapprove of them – ie, I withdraw my love.

pic by

pic by sephorah

Now, for a start this doesn’t tie in well with my intention of unconditional love always.

Secondly, my not feeling rejected is entirely predicated on my control of them succeeding (which, of course, it won’t).

I’d been tying how I loving I feel towards them to whether or not they behaved the way I wanted them to. So, sooner or later I’m going to end up being ‘not loving’ towards them (and as a side issue, feeling crappy myself).

To shortcut the whole rejection thing, I need to let go of the expectation that they will always behave exactly the way I want, or indeed that I have any control over them at all.

Once I let go of wanting to control them, I can choose to love them regardless of their behaviour.

Oh, and voila, since their behaviour makes no difference to this choice I’m never going to feel rejected by anything they do. Sometimes they’ll behave in a way I might enjoy more (which is great), sometimes they won’t (in which case, who cares, it’s their life to do with as they wish).

Of course, I’m always free to remove them from my life if what they’re doing is particularly deleterious to myself – but that’s a whole other conversation.

Dogs never try to control, always just love. pic by ingrid0804

In summary:

Wanting to control others leads to feeling rejected when this control fails.

Choosing to love (have positive regard towards) them regardless of their behaviour means never feeling rejected again.

If there’s one thing I’m learning in spades, life really can be very, very simple.

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    June 16, 2010

    TV Trains You To Expect The Worst

    I was watching an episode of United States of Tara the other day when I had something of a realisation.

    In case you don’t know the show, here’s the back story. Tara is a woman with dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personalities). For the sake of TV, they are 5 (or 6) very distinct & endlessly trouble making identities. A key part of the show, of course, is the actual woman herself (played by the incredibly talented Toni Collette) trying desperately to keep her life together despite the chaos sown by her sub personalities.

    In the episode I watched, she’d been taking her drugs regularly, & all her sub-identities had disappeared for several months. The family declared her life permanently changed, and everything was wonderful… for the first 15 minutes of the 22 minute show.

    I sat there through this wondering why my entire body was tense. As far as everything on the screen, the family was getting on well, things were humming along, and life was normal.

    So why was I stressed?

    pic by james good

    Then I realised. I was waiting for something to go wrong. Which eventually, of course, it did.

    Stepping back from this particular show, I realised a deeper (yet in hindsight obvious) truth: TV Drama thrives on.. well.. drama.

    If something isn’t going wrong, there’s no story.

    Stepping back again, this applies to comedy, horror, thriller, reality TV… in fact, every genre other than educational or documentary TV.

    Why? Because drama of some form is a critical part of telling a story, any story.

    If the hero/protagonist doesn’t have something to overcome, how can they prove they are (or become) a hero?

    Jack Bauer of 24 is the perfect (& thus oft caricatured) example of this, of course.

    In other words, something must necessarily always go wrong. No matter how great things seem, something bad is always about to happen.

    pic by rock creek

    The real issue here is this. Time watching TV is, in a very real sense, time spent training our brains to operate in a certain way.

    For example, we take it for granted, but when multiple camera TV first appeared, people had to retrain their brains to understand that shots from different angles were all telling the same story, & how to piece it all together into one linear narrative. Seeing things from multiple angles at once isn’t something that happens to our brains normally (let alone fades, swipes, crabbing, zooms, etc).

    Why is this suddenly all so clear to me? Because I have been wondering recently why my entire life I’ve always been expecting things to go wrong.

    Thanks TV!

    At this point, I am undecided about movies – their one-off nature & longer running times have more opportunity for  flexibility & depth in story telling (eg, starting with something bad having already happened & climbing out of it from there – eg Shipping News), but I think it’s safe to say my days of watching a lot of TV are over (except maybe Doctor Who, heh).

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      November 26, 2009

      The Moments That Define Us

      Now, from a title like that, you may be thinking I’m talking about those lifetime events that mark our place in history – ala Bill Gates selling DOS to IBM, or Lawn Chair Larry.

      No, I’m talking about the moments that define our character, and as a result, ultimately us as human beings.

      It breaks down like this. Anyone can be magnanimous, compassionate or loving in good times. What truly defines us is how we behave when things go wrong.

      That’s right, when something or someone pisses us off. The neighbour runs over our dog, our girlfriend runs off with a leper or someone just doesn’t quite behave the way we want them to (which is really a control issue on our part, but I digress).

      lawn_chair_larry.jpg

      I once heard the definition of maturity as “The difference in time between our emotional & rational responses to a situation.”

      That’s succinct, but I don’t necessarily believe that what’s rational is always what’s best.

      Is it rational to be unconditionally loving towards someone that is treating you like shit? No, but it sure as hell is the fastest way to defuse the situation. See also: Gandhi. It worked out pretty well for him, except for, you know, right at the end.

      A less succinct but more accurate definition might be “The difference in time between our fear & love based responses to a situation.”

      As we get more mature, our love based responses get closer & closer to the surface, and that time delay between fear & love gets ever shorter until it disappears altogether.

      For example, I know when I was younger, kids screaming or leaving mess everywhere used to drive me mad. I mean, really crazy. Growing up as the oldest of eight might have done that to me. Heh. These days though, I watch myself, & my first reaction is just “Is it happy screaming? Ok, that’s cool.” As for mess, well, they’re kids. You gently guide & provide a consistent example over a period of years, & eventually they’ll sort it out, but there’s no rush, they’ve got a ton of other learning to do too.

      gandhi_face.jpg

      This is where those minor daily upsets are actually a good thing. They provide feedback in two ways:

      1. Are we still instinctively reacting badly?
      2. How long is it taking us to calm down afterwards?

      The first tells us whether we still have more healing/growing to do in this area, while the second is a quantifiable measure of the progress that we’re making.

      This doesn’t mean I think you should welcome bad/upsetting events into your life, but given that these sorts of things tend to happen anyway, why not take advantage of them?

      Ultimately, it’s this ongoing collection of upsetting or unexpected situations & our reactions to them. That’s what defines us as people.

      As we grow & improve, these things bother us less & less.. & we become better people.

      I guarantee you one thing. If you can remain positive & loving when everything is falling apart around you, you’re going to be incredible when times are good.

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        November 2, 2009

        Anger is Stupid

        Two interesting things happened to me this week.

        The first, let’s call “Event X”, was that someone made me very, very angry. There’s no value in getting into the specifics, but I’ve wracked my brain & been unable to come up with a worse thing that anyone has ever done to me. There probably is, I just can’t remember it, so let’s put it in the top three.

        The second, let’s call “Event Y”, was that I made someone else very, very angry. Again, little value in the specifics – except to say that it was very definitely not intentional on my part (but of course I’d say that! I’m the one telling this story!)

        So, Event X. How did I react? Well, firstly, I don’t get angry very often. Not really angry. Maybe once every few years. I can distinctly remember the last time it happened, & that was February 2002. I get aggrieved, frustrated, annoyed, miffed.. but not real, cold anger. All these things are happening less & less these days (thankfully), but I’m still human.

        To start with, I was in shock. Plain, simple shock that such a terrible thing could be done to me. I then transitioned into serious, hardcore anger. I had a very brief flirt with thoughts of revenge – for less than a second – but where’s the value? Then you just have two upset people. As Ghandhi put so eloquently put it “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.”

        Then followed about 5 or 10 minutes of loud swearing (I was home alone), some surprise, disappointment, disbelief, & then, as I let more & more of it go, peace. And action, lots of action, to sort it all out.

        angry_green.jpg
        pic by urline

        So, not ideal, yet. But, over it in a day or so tops. Over the worst of it in about half an hour. For me, that’s a huge step forward. I’m happy with it. I’ll keep working on it. It will improve.

        Ok, let’s leave that for the moment & move on to Event Y. Me making someone else angry.

        I can’t explain how the other person felt, except that they were still bitter & spewing unrequested vitriol in my direction several hours later.

        Here’s the funny thing though. This wasn’t even anyone I know. I’d never met them before. Yes, a completely random internet stranger. Now, if I was going to be completely fair about it, I’d say I might have been a bit pushy. They might have been a bit careless – not paying as much attention as they could have been. Basically a very minor misunderstanding led to me doing something that they deemed utterly abhorrent. In my value system, it qualifies as “uhh, *shrug* so what?” but ok, everyone gets upset by different things.

        Anyway, I could see that this person was in pain. They were screaming furious (sound familiar?) All over what to me was a simple misunderstanding, fixed with one click of a button. Them being upset didn’t bother me particularly, I just thought, well, they should have paid more attention, & besides, it’s such a minor thing, really, who cares?

        But of course, different value systems – you can see where the misunderstanding might creep in.

        The practical upshot was this – that person poured a ton of negative energy (bile, acid, stress) into their body for an extended period of time. Net effect on me? Basically zero.

        Ok, so back to Event X.

        Here’s what I realised today.

        This person had been threatening to do what they actually ended up doing for weeks. I just figured they wouldn’t go through with it, so of course it was a huge shock when they did. However, if I’d actually listened to them, and taken action much earlier, I wouldn’t even have noticed what they’d done. The effect on me would have been absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. Actually the outcome has been very positive.

        angry_bob.jpg

        So, hang on, I got that angry, for what? Not paying attention? Not acting on what I’d already been told. Basically, I got angry because they did what they said they would do. Because they were as good as their word.

        Uh, what?!?

        I know I got stressed. Probably shortened my lifespan in the process.

        What a complete & utter waste of energy.

        Carrie Fisher had a great quote about resentment – but the exact same thing applies to anger, so I’ll paraphrase (Thanks Carrie, love your work!):

        “Anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”

        So true. So very, VERY true.

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          August 25, 2009

          How To Be Confident

          Confidence is a funny thing. It comes in two flavours. How confident other people believe you are, & how confident you feel internally. The two are related, but not necessarily linked. E.g., it’s quite common that other people see us as more confident than we may actually feel.

          So how do you go about becoming more confident?

          Well, there’s a bunch of physical attributes: head up, shoulders back, firm eye contact, firm handshake, steady voice. None of this is new or complicated. You can read more about it here & here.

          Changing your posture does change your emotional state, so by all means do the physical stuff as well (it’ll help how you feel), but I’m going to talk about working directly on the non-physical stuff.

          Let’s start with the easy side of things – how we’re perceived externally. Other than posture, how do other people assess how confident we are?

          By our speech. What we say, how we say it, the words we use.

          I got to thinking about this when reading Jeannette Maw’s excellent Good Vibe Blog. She was talking about wiping out wimpy words. Words that disempower us, make us sound wishy washy, limit us.

          These are all words & phrases that will make us seems significantly less confident than we may actually be.

          lion.jpg
          pic by nnn27

          What are some examples?

          • Hopefully
          • Probably
          • Should
          • I suppose

          So, my hypothesis is, if we stop using these kinds of words, we’ll appear (externally) more confident.

          Well, that sounds worth doing, but wait up a second. Before we rush into this, let’s think a little.

          Who do we talk to the most, out of all of the people in our lives?

          Ourselves, of course.

          For every time we say something out loud that makes us sound insecure, we’re going to be saying the exact same thing to ourselves dozens if not hundreds of times.

          Removing these words from our vocab will not only make us more confident to others, but will also make us notably more confident internally, when talking to ourselves.

          As within, so without – maybe it’s not quite so much of a surprise after all.

          Of course, a healthy goal is to remove that nagging inner voice entirely (through meditation, releasing etc), but until we reach that noble pinnacle of enlightenment & inner peace, we still have to contend with our ego. Why not push things in our favour in the meantime?

          What’s a good way of removing (or at the very least drastically minimising) specific words & phrases from our vocabulary? Well, the tool I’ve found best for this task is EFT. It’s super simple to use and ridiculously quick.

          If you haven’t used EFT before, I’ve put a quick intro up here. The basic gist is to tap (just like tapping a keyboard, but with a coupla fingers at once) on various points around the body, while thinking or saying whatever-it-is you want to fix. The tapping loosens up energy blocks in the body, your energy starts flowing properly again and you automatically heal (since our natural state is to be 100% healthy).

          So how to remove a word from your vocab? Just tap the karate chop point (side of hand) while saying something like “Even though I say ‘hopefully’ I love & accept myself”, or “Even though I use the phrase ‘I guess’ I love & accept myself.” Really, the words don’t matter too much, just say whatever pops in your head & feels right for you. Once you’ve said that a few times while tapping your karate chop point, work your way around the points on the body (pic here), saying “I say ‘hopefully” or “I use the word ‘hopefully'” etc & tapping each point 5-10 times.

          Once you’ve done a couple of full rounds, & if you want to be really thorough, you can do a couple more rounds, saying something like “I still say ‘hopefully’.” This will clear out any remants that might be left over.

          It really is that simple. Total time? 2-3 minutes a word, if that.

          fire.jpg
          pic by pixietart

          Here’s the list I cleared out yesterday:

          • hopefully
          • probably
          • should
          • try
          • pretty sure
          • I’ll figure it out
          • doubt
          • can’t
          • want (since want is synonymous with ‘lack’, why not clear that too?)
          • I guess
          • I suppose
          • I need to
          • I’m not sure
          • I don’t think
          • kinda

          Of course, everyone uses different words & phrases, so your own list will likely be quite different, but these might help you get started. Just see what resonates for you.

          The funny thing is, as you start to clear them out, other commonly used limiting phrases will start to become more obvious & bubble to the surface. I also felt the way I was thinking changing. Sounds insane but it’s true. I could feel myself using different phrasing internally, & as I did, my body became more sure of itself. Not quite sure (ha! I’ll add that to my list) how that works, but a definite example of the mind/body connection at play.

          The net result of all this mucking about? More confident thought patterns, more confident speech & a significantly more confident persona. Total time taken? A little over half an hour.

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