via Learning Mind
We are spending more time alone, and being inundated with various forms of online communication has made us more introspective. Suddenly, we are more concerned in regards to how we appear to others and what others really mean when they talk to us. The mind of an overthinker is rarely at peace, always worried about something or another.
Here are 11 struggles all overthinkers can relate to, which will help you understand what it means to be an overthinker or will sound familiar if you are one yourself.
1. Over analysing everything
You might find yourself over analysing a particular situation or something somebody said to you. There are countless possibilities when you start to think deeply, and before you know, it snowballs into a twisted version of your original thought.
2. You find yourself interpreting a situation that happened days ago
Maybe it was an argument or just a normal conversation (well, normal for the other party that is). But you can’t stop thinking about the event and how you would have done or said things differently; instead you keep worrying about how events folded out.
3. If you are shopping and you see a friend, but they ignore you… your instant thought is full of hurt
Or are you are overwhelmed with concern for them? Instead of moving on with your day, you can’t stop thinking about the non-meeting that just happened.
4. You know those text messages, the ones you can write a thesis about, analysing their hidden meaning
Whether it is from a friend or a significant other, you can look into it so deeply that a few sentences are given a whole new deeper meaning than possibly intended. Usually, the conclusion is something terrible, am I correct?
5. When something has gone wrong, no one else can imagine the criticism you are putting on yourself
And how you struggle to come to terms with a situation that essentially causes you a lot of distress.
6. Social media has brought on a whole new level of hassle
Trying to understand if whether that tweet was about you, why has so and so unfollowed you on Instagram and so forth.
7. It’s really difficult to live in the moment
Living in the moment can be nearly impossible for someone who breaks down each moment and finds themselves thinking about a particular issue relentlessly. Instead, you are wondering what is going to happen next or worrying about a past event than just to relax and enjoy the moment.
8. Forget about trying to compartmentalise!
One thought is enough to take over your life, nibbling away at your thoughts no matter how much you try to meditate and clear your head.
9. That breakup was clearly your fault
In case you break up with your loved one, your head is full of thoughts like these: Maybe I did something wrong. What could I have done to make him/her love me more? Why has this happened to me?
10. Thinking a lot does make you more aware of other people’s feelings
Overthinkers are incredibly empathetic creatures, trying their best to figure out what is wrong with other people and how to make them feel better.
11. Sleep and meditation are some of the most difficult things to do
With our minds whirring away with one thought or another, it is really challenging to let ourselves rest.
Finally, overthinking can lead to over analysing situations or people endlessly, causing anxiety as well as misunderstanding. It turns something that would probably be normal for most people into a distressing and overwhelming experience. Daily life can be affected and whatever you do, don’t beat yourself up if you are an overthinker.
via Link
https://youtu.be/-9mzJFUwTCo
Here Teal uses the "Metaphysics of Duality" to explain that a human is his mind/body/emotions - yet not it, yet transcendent.
This metaphysical concept (A phenomenon being A & Not A both) shows up in lots of applications of philosophy as well as Quantum Physics.
It's a very real concept though it is of course paradoxical.
Worth a listen.
via WEFORUM
It may seem that wise, strong people typically have gone through a few hard times in their lives. By comparison, those who have led a very sheltered and privileged life often appear to crack more easily under pressure. But is it really true that some degree of pain and trauma can make us stronger? And if so, at what point does it destroy us?
Seriously traumatic events – such as accidents or terrorist attacks – can evoke fear and helplessness in the face of a threat to life or serious injury. Fear responses are often more extreme if the trauma is unsystematic and random. That’s because the utter senselessness of the situation makes it difficult for individuals to interpret what is happening around them. How does one explain the mindless murder of the innocent, for example?
These events corrupt the sense of confidence, stability and trust we have in the world. But miraculously it turns out they can actually help us be stronger – although not everyone. Indeed, psychologists have long been interested in why some individuals appear to overcome traumatic events and thrive while others appear unable to recover, continuing to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or other mental-health problems.
Building resilience
Research on victims of serious trauma has found that about 75% of them do not appear to be significantly impaired after the incident, despite being stressed and traumatised at the time of the incident.
So what characteristics do those individuals have that are different?
First and foremost it is a quality that psychologists call resilience, the ability to cope and adapt in the face of hardship, loss or adversity. It is the capacity to deal effectively with stress and pressure and to rebound from disappointments and mistakes. A person with psychological resilience is able to solve problems and meet life’s challenges with confidence and purpose, demonstrating impressive self-renewal skills when necessary.
Whether it’s chronic illness, sexual, physical or emotional abuse or fear and threat of violence, resilient individuals have better coping success when under psychological distress, higher self-efficacy and self-esteem as well as more optimism and hope. They also tend to have fewer psychological and health-related problems. Resilient individuals are typically also internally consistent, assertive, cognitively flexible, autonomous and have a personal moral compass and an ability to face their fears.
When studying the personality traits of resilient holocaust survivors, who had suffered extreme trauma and watched their families and friends die in the camps, we found that they were characterised by optimism, creative problem solving and acceptance of their situation. These people typically reported that they always had hope that they would somehow endure and that the story of their lives would one day be told.
However, resilience does not have to come from extreme emotional and physical trauma. More than two-thirds of the general population will experience events they find traumatic in their lifetimes. Life experiences such as poverty, dysfunctional families and bullying can also have lasting impacts – it’s a dynamic interaction of a variety of influences such as personalty, coping responses and our appraisal of the trauma that shape us.
Nature versus nurture
It’s not entirely clear to what extent we are born with resilience and to what extent it is something that we learn. But it is certainly a construct that can be improved and built upon. Positive emotions help to establish a building block that broadens the domain of effective behaviours in regards to stress and trauma. However the building of resiliency must occur before a stressful situation – just like immunity to an infection or disease.
But that’s not the whole story. Actually going through a trauma can provide us with the opportunities to become more resilient to the next life-impacting event. When going through tough times we get to know ourselves and learn about the behaviours that we exhibit when stressed – and how to best manage them. This in turn also helps build confidence.
So does that mean that people with an “easy life”, who may not have had the opportunity to learn how to be resilient, are worse at it? While this could be the case, there isn’t any research on this, probably because it isn’t exactly straightforward how to define an “easy” life. What’s more, psychologists tend to study people who are traumatised – they are the ones that actually need our help. Having said that, there are people who may not have suffered much trauma but are nevertheless able to suddenly stand up and rescue 20 people from drowning instead of only saving themselves in a crisis – and this is showing a type of resilience.
Ultimately, resilience is a complicated mix of personality and experience. Each of us has the capability to get back up and carry on, whether we use it or not. Having a sense of one’s own meaning is probably the most important characteristic of building resilience – everyone has something to contribute, everyone has extraordinary possibilities and strengths. Understanding your uniqueness is the first step to recognising your worth and is one way of beginning to improve your psychological resiliency. Hopefully, just knowing that it is something we can improve can help some of us move in the right direction.
And if the universe is eternal, you were dead for an eternity before you were born.
Satori yet?
Do you feel marooned?
Are you marooned?
Or is it just a feeling?
Thought Catalog
Every situation is like food.
The ingredients you put in food determine the final product.
The ingredients you put in a situation determine the final product.
Would you like to put negativity into the food of the future? [Relationships]
All negativity generated within you, you have to see the causes. And find healthy ways to either transmute the negativity or employ it as fuel for something good. Don't put it into food of the future, i.e. relationships.
Dealing with the critical inner voice:
Keeping a Journal© psychalive.org
Keeping a journal can be an effective tool for helping you identify and challenge your critical inner voice. Divide a page in half by drawing a line down the middle of the page from top to bottom. On the left side of the page, record negative thoughts toward yourself that you experience during the day. Be sure to write these thoughts as your critical inner voices in the second person, “you,” that is, as though someone were talking to you.
It is helpful to devote 10 to 15 minutes at the end of your day to recalling the negative thoughts you experienced that day. Just let these thoughts flow. Don’t censor yourself. Give full expression to your negative thoughts. Don’t be afraid of them. You don’t have to believe them or act on them. Getting them out in the open, writing them down, will actually give you more control over them. Get to know all the aspects of your negative thinking. Also don’t worry if the thoughts are not logical. Remember that the voice is irrational and the thoughts often contradict each other. After you have finished writing your critical thoughts on the left-hand side of the page, take some time to go back over them. Check to make sure you have written them all in the second person.
Next, on the right-hand side of the page, in relation to each attack, try to express a more friendly, compassionate and realistic view of yourself, your qualities, and your reactions. What would a close friend or an objective observer say or see about you and about the situation? Write this more accurate view of yourself on the right-hand side of the page. Make sure to write it in the first person, as “I” statements. This is not meant to be an exercise where you buoy yourself up with self-affirmative statements, but rather where you look at yourself from an objective but compassionate point of view. How do you see yourself?
If you do this exercise on your computer, follow the first step and write down your critical inner voices (in the second person). When you are done, go back into your document and, after each attack, write your objective view of yourself (in the first person).
Throughout the week, continue to keep a record of the negative thoughts you experience each day, always in the second person, followed by a more compassionate view of yourself written in the first person. At the end of the week, review your journal. Look for any areas in which attacks recur. In the future, you can be aware that these areas are vulnerable to attack by your critical inner voice. Were any of your attacks triggered by specific events? Now when these events occur, you can be on the look out for self-attacks.
Great advice, things like maintaining a positive aspects journal, and digging deeper into feelings behind complaining.
Of course, our complaints are mostly correct. No denying that. We are intelligent, sentient beings.
But those deeper emotions beneath our complaints. Is there a deeper layer underneath our complaints? This deeper layer can be our general perspective. Much like climate is the deeper layer of our environment, and today's weather is the upper layer.
So what is our internal climate? And what is our internal weather today?
Are all our complaints correct? Or do some of our complaints hide something else? Can our emotions manipulate our judgement? Can a morbid situation be seen in a different light? Is everything morbid, or is it our mood that is morbid? Is our mood morbid because of unresolved events, or is our mood morbid as a general condition that has developed over a lifetime?
Are there any real issues that we are not focused on?
Introduction:
If we feel that a certain situation is jammed or clogged, we need to revisit not just the situation, but also our own "reaction set" to the situation. Our circuits too could be jammed and clogged.
Everything has solutions. Everything. We need to step back and WATCH OURSELVES WATCHING OR THINKING ABOUT THE CLOGGED SITUATION.
Stress is getting to us.
New data are showing that stress is getting under our skin and causing even more serious problems than we had thought.
At the very same time, neuroscience is helping us understand stress so that we can do something about it.
First the bad news: suicide and drug overdoses are on the rise. According to a New York Times survey, there was five-fold death rate increase for young non-Hispanic whites from 1999 to 2014. A meticulous analysis of national health data by two Princeton economists that was released last November showed similar trends.
Neuroscience shows us the way...
What is the good news? There is plenty of it. First, according to Mark D. Hayward, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, mortality data is often an early warning sign that something ominous is on the horizon, in this case, stress. We can take note that environmental stress is becoming extreme and take effective action to prevent it from impacting the quality of our lives.
Second, neuroscience is showing us how to be far more effective in combatting stress. Our individual experiences of stress are caused by the internalization of our environment. The inevitable moments of stress overload – losses, changes, upsets – become stored in our brain as circuits.
Once encoded, they brain over-remembers them – holds onto those experiences as if our lives depended upon it. A moment of rejection leaves behind an "I am bad" circuit that triggers shame. If we reached for food, an "I get my safety from food" circuit that triggers overeating. These circuits can stay stuck in our brains for a lifetime, controlling our automatic responses to the stresses of life, ramping up our stress.
The great news is that these emotional circuits are among the most plastic in the brain. We can rewire the circuits that trigger our stress – and are responsible for most chronic stress – to create a neuroscience-based strategy to release stress.
We can't do much about external stress – globalization, intense competition, information overload, rapid speed of change – but we can change that internal wiring.
Think "circuits" - not "issues" or "problems"
Neuroscientist and stress pioneer Bruce McEwen has helped us understand stress as a circuitry issue. With my colleagues, I developed a method of using simple tools to spiral up out of stress to feeling great and – at the same time – make small but important improvements in that wiring.
The method, emotional brain training (EBT), gives us a new tool for combating stress that is based on neuroscience. The traditional strategy has been to ease stress by getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, setting aside time for social interactions, meditating and adopting a healthy way of eating.
The emerging strategy is to go to the root cause: our wiring. It's to begin thinking in terms of our circuits, identifying the ones that get us stuck in overeating, anxiety, depression, isolation – or other stress-induced problems, and using brain-based tools to rewire them.
Based on neurophysiology, we all have two kinds of circuits that trigger how we respond to the stimuli of daily life. One kind of wire is effective. When the brain activates it, we have self-regulatory success. We are resilient, moving through the experience with relative ease and returning to a state of well-being. The other kind of wire is ineffective and causes us to get stuck in stress and extreme emotions, thoughts and behaviors.
What kind of circuit am I activating?
Imagine two women, Anna and Megan, who are good friends and on a bright, sunny day, are walking toward a café to have tea and catch up on each other’s lives. All of a sudden, a large truck swerves toward them, then buzzes past them.
The sensations from that narrow escape land in the thalamus, which is located in the emotional brain, the storehouse of their self-regulatory circuitry. Instantly, circuits compete for activation, with the strongest one winning out. Whichever wire wins out both controls our momentary emotions, thoughts and behaviors and gains ground on the other wires by becoming stronger.
Anna triggers an effective circuit. She is appropriately alarmed and jumps away from the street. She checks to see whether or not Megan is safe, and then says, “Wow, were we lucky!” The circuit de-activates and Anna feels emotionally connected and happy to be on her way to the café with Megan.
In contrast, Megan triggers an ineffective circuit. She panics and begins shaking, then flies into a rage: “What an idiot. I hate that guy. What the #### is he doing!” The circuit gets stuck on and Anna has a protracted and extreme stress response. She can’t think about anything but what just happened, and the chance of having an enjoyable conversation with Anna is slim – or is it?
Simple tools to spiral up and feel better
According to emerging research in neuroscience, Anna and Megan could reframe that stressful moment as a positive situation. The ineffective circuits that ramp up stress are more open to reconsolidation when we are stressed.
Research conducted by Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues at the Emotional Brain Institute, New York University, has shown that stressful situations unlock ineffective circuits, presenting an opportunity to change them.
Given that Anna and Megan can't turn back the clock and prevent that stressful situation from occurring, they can choose to make good use of that stress. Anna can use the EBT tools to process negative emotions, so she feels better and, at the same time, improves her wiring. Megan can be a warm presence for her as she uses them, and will benefit, too.
If Anna and Megan understood the neuroscience of stress and the knew how to use the tools, their conversation might go something like this:
Anna: “Megan, did you get triggered?”
Megan: “Yes. I am totally stressed. My whole body is shaking."
Anna: “I’m sorry it happened.”
Megan: “Me, too.”
Anna: “Do you want to use the tools?”
Megan: “Yes, will you listen to me?”
Anna: “Sure. I want to spiral up with you.”
Megan: “It’s just a wire.”
Anna: “I know. I want to rewire it.”
They would go to the café and after the server brought their tea, Megan would listen while Anna used one of the EBT tools.
Anna: “The situation is . . . We were walking along and this horrible truck almost hit us and I could have been killed. What I’m most stressed about is . . . the man was so careless. He could have hurt us.”
By this time, Anna would be calmer, so she would use the tool for that works when we are a little stressed. There are five stress levels in the brain and 5 corresponding EBT tools. In this situation, she uses the Flow Plus Tool.This technique gives her the structure to talk about what bothers her, but also, to process her emotions in a brain-savvy way.
In addition, as the emotional brain has no walls, by using the tool in the presence of Megan or another member of the EBT online community ("an EBT connection buddy"), both people feel better and both people train their brain to release stress.
Anna: “I feel angry that he wasn’t careful. I can’t stand it that he didn’t see me. I hate it that he could have hurt me. I hate that!”
After expressing her anger, her more balanced feelings begin to flow. Soon her negative, stressed feelings turn into positive, relaxed feelings.
Anna: “I feel sad that . . . people are so careless. I feel afraid that . . . people are dangerous. I feel guilty . . . that I expect people to be perfect all the time.”
At that point, Anna has released her negative stress and her emotions become positive.
“I feel grateful that you are here with me. I feel happy that I can laugh about it, and I feel secure that life is not all bad. Last, I feel proud that I have a friend who will listen to me express my feelings.”
Megan has been present and aware of Anna’s feelings, which are infectious. The color returns to her face and she smiles slightly. Both women feel better – and they made small but important improvements in their wiring.
Laurel Mellin/EBT, Inc.
Source: Laurel Mellin/EBT, Inc.
The power to spiral up!
Stressful situations come up daily for most of us. By taking a few minutes to use these emotional tools, we can prevent the day’s stress from getting under our skin.
Our environment may continue to be stressful, but these tools give us a boundary between that stress and our internal world.
Establishing that boundary takes work. It takes learning the five tools of EBT and using the tools with others, as these circuits are stored in the emotional brain, which is the social brain.
We can use the tools with those who are close to us – as Anna and Megan did – or anonymously through our private online EBT community.
With each spiral up we go to a better place for a moment – to a "sweet spot" in the brain of neural integration. In that state, we can experience a "flicker" of positive emotions, such as love, gratitude, compassion, hope, forgiveness, awe, or joy.
Our first spiral up feels great – and we are apt to want to feel that way more often. That's the goal of EBT, that is, to train the brain to release stress so that we naturally spiral up more often and stay in that state of well-being more easily.
Scientists are now convinced that there's trillions of civilisations, just in the Milky Way galaxy....
Not surprising. If the Milky Way is a football field 70 million miles long, the earth is just a grain of salt.
So if we sit and pass a judgement on the Milky Way, saying there's no living creature out there, it is the same as a molecule of a grain of salt passing a judgement on a football field that is 70 million miles long.....
And the Milky Way itself is just a grain of salt, on a bigger canvas. So what exactly are we judging? Do we even know what we are judging, by saying there's no life out there in the Universe?
Back in the 1990s, I saw a movie about a highly evolved alien humanoid race.
These humanoids had come to earth on a peaceful, clandestine mission, and were indistinguishable from earth humans biologically.
Except that mentally, they were much bigger, much vaster....their mental stature was like a 100 foot tall human, their minds were vaster and had more dimensions to them than we can possibly fathom.
It is difficult to express in words, the representations in that movie. The work of a genius. Whoever conceptualised that movie knew what he was talking about. I will update this blog entry with the name of the movie as soon as I can remember it.
But -- imagine a human who can see a given situation from 10 different intellectual points of view. Or 100 different intellectual points of view.
I believe, and with no half baked reasoning, that is very possible for such humans to exist out there. And for us to say no is frog in the well thinking.
An interesting song which tries to comprehend "GOD"...
via HuffPost
You don’t need more motivation. You don’t need to be inspired to action. You don’t need to read any more lists and posts about how you’re not doing enough.
We act as if we can read enough articles and enough little Pinterest quotes and suddenly the little switch in our brain will put us into action. But, honestly, here’s the thing that nobody really talks about when it comes to success and motivation and willpower and goals and productivity and all those little buzzwords that have come into popularity: you are as you are until you’re not. You change when you want to change. You put your ideas into action in the timing that is best. That’s just how it happens.
And what I think we all need more than anything is this: permission to be wherever the fuck we are when we’re there.
You’re not a robot. You can’t just conjure up motivation when you don’t have it. Sometimes you’re going through something. Sometimes life has happened. Life! Remember life? Yeah, it teaches you things and sometimes makes you go the long way around for your biggest lessons.
You don’t get to control everything. You can wake up at 5 a.m. every day until you’re tired and broken, but if the words or the painting or the ideas don’t want to come to fruition, they won’t. You can show up every day to your best intentions, but if it’s not the time, it’s just not the fucking time. You need to give yourself permission to be a human being.
“If it’s not the time, it’s just not the fucking time. You need to give yourself permission to be a human being.”
Sometimes the novel is not ready to be written because you haven’t met the inspiration for your main character yet. Sometimes you need two more years of life experience before you can make your masterpiece into something that will feel real and true and raw to other people. Sometimes you’re not falling in love because whatever you need to know about yourself is only knowable through solitude. Sometimes you haven’t met your next collaborator. Sometimes your sadness encircles you because, one day, it will be the opus upon which you build your life.
We all know this: Our experience cannot always be manipulated. Yet, we don’t act as though we know this truth. We try so hard to manipulate and control our lives, to make creativity into a game to win, to shortcut success because others say they have, to process emotions and uncertainty as if these are linear journeys.
You don’t get to game the system of your life. You just don’t. You don’t get to control every outcome and aspect as a way to never give in to the uncertainty and unpredictability of something that’s beyond what you understand. It’s the basis of presence: to show up as you are in this moment and let that be enough.
Yet, we don’t act in a way that supports this lifestyle. We fill every minute with productivity tools and read 30-point lists on how to better drive out natural, human impulse. We often forget that we are as we are until we’re not. We are the same until we’re changed. We can move that a bit further by putting into place healthy habits and to show up to our lives in a way that fosters growth, but we can’t game timing.
Timing is the one thing that we often forget to surrender to.
Things are dark until they’re not. Most of our unhappiness stems from the belief that our lives should be different than they are. We believe we have control — and our self-loathing and self-hatred comes from this idea that we should be able to change our circumstances, that we should be richer or hotter or better or happier. While self-responsibility is empowering, it can often lead to this resentment and bitterness that none of us need to be holding within us. We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen—and to not feel so directly and vulnerably tied to outcomes. Opportunities often don’t show up in the way we think they will.
You don’t need more motivation or inspiration to create the life you want. You need less shame around the idea that you’re not doing your best. You need to stop listening to people who are in vastly different life circumstances and life stages than you tell you that you’re just not doing or being enough. You need to let timing do what it needs to do. You need to see lessons where you see barriers. You need to understand that what’s right now becomes inspiration later. You need to see that wherever you are now is what becomes your identity later.
“There’s a magic beyond us that works in ways we can’t understand. We can’t game it. We can’t 10-point list it. We can’t control it.”
Sometimes we’re not yet the people we need to be in order to contain the desires we have. Sometimes we have to let ourselves evolve into the place where we can allow what we want to transpire.
Let’s just say that whatever you want, you want it enough. So much so that you’re making yourself miserable in order to achieve it. What about chilling out? Maybe your motivation isn’t the problem, but that you keep pushing a boulder up a mountain that only grows in size the more you push.
There’s a magic beyond us that works in ways we can’t understand. We can’t game it. We can’t 10-point list it. We can’t control it. We have to just let it be, to take a fucking step back for a moment, stop beating ourselves up into oblivion, and to let the cogs turn as they will. One day, this moment will make sense. Trust that.
Give yourself permission to trust that.
Jamie Varon is a writer based out of Los Angeles. You can connect with her on Twitter, Instagram, and at her Facebook page.
Follow Jamie Varon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamievaron
WHEN IT COMES TO ADVICE FROM OTHERS.......TRUST YOUR INNER SELF! When you do this, your confidence and self-esteem grows. But if you blindly trust someone else who you consider an expert, we can actually see in brain scans that your motivation is weakened. You feel more doubt and take less action simply by believing that someone knows more about yourself than you
When you listen to advice from others, do it mindfully. Listen but don’t judge. Notice how the advice makes you feel as you listen to all your inner voices: the voice of reason, the voice of experience, the voice of knowledge, and that whisper of intuition that speaks to you without words. When you integrate all of these inner and outer nuggets of wisdom, you’ll make the best decisions that lead to a full and satisfying life. - NeuroCoach Mark Robert Waldman's timeline.
"HOW TO TRUST YOURSELF" BY TEAL SWAN
We have heard again and again from self-help experts and psychologists that it is crucial to our wellbeing to trust ourselves, but how do we learn to trust ourselves, when the truth is...we don't.
Self trust can be summed up as the assured reliance on your own character, ability, strength, and truth. This sounds straightforward enough. The problem is, most of us have spent our lives listening to our parents, our government, our teachers and our bosses. We have been raised with the idea that we do not know what is best for ourselves. Instead, we are taught that other people who “know more than we do”; know what is best for us. Because of this, we choose what we think we are supposed to choose. We try to live according to what our society says is “right”. We allow ourselves to be who we are told that we are; and we are caught in an endless struggle of seeking approval and reaching for recognition. The result is that we loose trust in ourselves. The cost of shaping ourselves to fit the desires, preferences, and expectations of others, is losing ourselves; and when we loose ourselves we become frozen without direction, unable to make our own choices.
The two most painful states in this universe are self-hate and self-distrust. It just so happens that one comes from the other. Self hate comes from self distrust. Life is torture when you don’t trust yourself and without exception, people who suffer chronically, suffer because the root of the dysfunction in their lives is that they don’t trust themselves. They don’t trust themselves to be able to influence how they feel, they don’t trust themselves to not give into others they don’t trust themselves to create their reality, they don’t trust themselves to make the right choices. They don’t trust themselves to know. The list goes on and on.
So here are some tips for how to begin to trust yourself
Build your self-confidence. Self-confidence and self-trust are a married couple. When we use the word confidence, what we mean is your ability to depend upon yourself. If you don't have self confidence, you won’t feel able to depend on yourself. When we understand that lack of self trust, goes hand in hand with lack of self confidence, we can easily see that not trusting ourselves is a self worth issue. It is an issue of devaluing and invalidating ourselves. If we don’t trust ourselves, we lack self esteem and we do not perceive our own value. One of the reasons that we do not trust ourselves, is that we do not accept our own abilities, talents, intentions, and value. Take time to acknowledge your abilities, talents, positive traits, and thus value.
Allow yourself to do what you are good at and what comes easily to you. Everyone is good at something. We don’t often allow ourselves to do what we are good at however because we have all been raised in a society which values effort. Most of us think it is weak to do the things that come easy to us. But for us to learn how to trust ourselves, we need to allow ourselves to do what we are good at and what comes easily to us. If we always feel as if it is a struggle to do things, we will always feel behind the pack. So own up to the things which you excel at, and then focus on designing your life around those things. Give yourself permission to take pride in them and give yourself credit for your successes. These steps will give a hefty boost to your self confidence and subsequently, your self trust.
Let go of the idea of “the” right answer and just look for “your” right answer. Those of us, who don’t feel as if we can trust ourselves, are preoccupied with the idea of right and wrong. It paralyzes us. We fear making the “wrong” choice so much, we procrastinate making any choice, and we trust everyone’s opinion except for our own. It is important for us to realize that when we are facing a problem or decision, there is no such thing as one right answer that we have to somehow find. Gain perspective by eliciting other people’s opinions, but do not “weigh them” in order to make your final decision. Instead, make your own decision. Use inquiry to question your current perspective and consciously choose a perspective, which serves your highest good. Every single person, experiences the world in their own way. So we make decisions about what is right based on our own individual assumptions, judgments, perceptions and past experiences. No two perspectives will be the same. And no one can see the situation from your perspective. You are also never going to have all of the information that you would like to have in order to make your decision. You can’t know everything and so sometimes you have to take a risk by making a choice anyway. You cannot find a “right” answer. All you can find is your right answer.
Take risks, even if taking those risks results in making “mistakes”. We have to be willing to take risks and make mistakes in life. One day during my sports career, I was in a panic about racing as usual. At that point in my life, my self worth was completely tied up in performance. As a result, I had the habit of getting such bad performance anxiety that I did terribly in races and sometimes didn’t even show up for them. But on a chairlift on the way to the starting gate, I had an epiphany. The epiphany was this: I have lost 100% of the races that I didn’t run. This is the case when we don’t take risks. We like to think that if we don’t take risks, we don’t fail. But the truth is the exact opposite of that. If we don’t take the risk, we have already failed. While it can be scary for us to take risks in life, it is one of the best ways we can build our capacity for self trust. Taking risks takes courage, and courage makes us feel better about ourselves. It allows us to see what we are really capable of, which in turn helps us to trust ourselves. You wont know that you can trust yourself unless you take a risk and see that you can.
Own the responsibility for your own decisions and their consequences, both the positive consequences and negative consequences. Owning the responsibility for the decisions we make, is crucial when we are developing trust in ourselves. We need to experience both the process of making a decision and the process of directly experiencing the results of that decision so that we can learn. If we fall into the trap of denying our part in the decision or blame others for the decision we made, we end up depriving ourselves of the opportunity to learn. Likewise, if we try to escape from the consequences of our decisions, we miss the opportunity for getting the feedback we need so that we can make better decisions in the future. This is the same thing as robbing ourselves of an improved life in the future. Also, we cannot blame someone else without simultaneously acknowledging our own powerlessness to them. Thinking of yourself as powerless, does the opposite of encourage self trust. It makes you feel like you can’t rely on yourself.
Live your life according to your own personal sense of integrity. Those of us who don’t trust ourselves often struggle with our own sense of integrity. If you are not living with integrity, your goals become hard to reach, you attract people who are also not living with integrity, your self concept disintegrates and you lose your trust in yourself. Lack of integrity can reflect out into the world in big ways such as intentionally sabotaging someone else or stealing from them. It can also reflect out into the world in small ways, such as telling little white lies, gossiping or not standing up for yourself. Any lack of integrity erodes your self-concept. Identify what it means to you personally to have integrity. No one can decide this for you, because no two people have the same values, morals and ethics. Identify the areas of your life in which you are not living with integrity. Then pick three changes you can make right now to restore your integrity. For example, your answer may be to write an apology letter, or to “come out of the closet” to your family by telling them that you are gay, answer may be to stop gossiping or to re pay money that you stole.
Compile a list of all the ways that you do trust yourself. Our level of trust is often different relative to different things. For example, we may trust our instincts relative to some things, like driving our car; while we doubt ourselves relative to other things, like making a good impression in an interview. Take some time to compile a list of all the ways that you currently know you can trust yourself. Compile this list by filling in the blank as many times as you can. “I trust myself to________”. For example, “I trust myself to be loyal to the person I have committed to”. Or “I trust myself to be loyal to my own happiness regardless of whether or not that means breaking a commitment that I have made to someone”. Some other examples might be, “I trust myself to care for my pets”. Or “I trust myself to do exactly what I say I’m going to do”. Or “I trust myself to make a breakfast which tastes good”. Nothing is too small or too large to include in this list. Any kind of trust, no matter what it is in, is important because it is trust. We have the tendency to ignore the ways that we actually do trust ourselves, when we become aware of the ways that we don’t trust ourselves. This corrodes our self-concept. It disables us by making us feel bad about ourselves, instead of simply allowing us to incrementally build trust in the things we don’t currently have trust in.
Listen to your feelings. They always have important messages to share. If we want to trust ourselves, we need to learn to trust our own feelings. Feelings are the truth of who we are. Most people who are alive today have forgotten their most acute and accurate sense of all—their emotions and sensations. The average person views feelings as a menace; something to fight, something he or she is powerless to, a drawback, and even something to distrust. The average person does not know what purpose they serve. The result is, many of us are living in a tug of war between being a slave to them and flipping around to wage war with them. We have a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry set up to make a profit from chemically aiding people to suppress their feelings and change them. This is especially sad considering that your feelings are the compass guiding you through this venture called life. They are all the guidance you will ever need. That is why intuition speaks to you via the route your feelings. It is only when we ignore our feelings (the compass) that we become convinced that our feelings have ever failed us and are ever negative in nature. In effect, we ignore our internal compass while it is screaming at us louder and louder, and then we blame the compass itself for the reason that we are upset, because it feels so unnatural and miserable to us to be going in the wrong direction.
Now we come to the last and most important tip it comes to self trust… The reason that you don’t trust yourself is because you abandon yourself. You do this by not listening to and honoring your feelings (we call this violating your boundaries) and you run from your negative emotion. The holy grail of self trust is learning to STAY, which is an acronym for STop Abandoning Yourself.
The first way we learn to STAY is to Stop running from our negative emotions. Can you count on yourself to be there for you? For most people on earth the answer is no. The reason is, they keep trying to feel better. When you start to feel negative emotion, part of you feels really worried and afraid because it knows that the other part of you is going to try to run away from you if you feel that way. You keep trying to get yourself to feel differently so you will want to be with yourself. Most of us only want to be with ourselves if we feel good. We do anything we can do to feel differently so we will want to be present with ourselves and our lives again. Sometimes we even engage in destructive addictions to escape the way we feel and therefore ourselves. This does further damage. It reinforces the idea that if you feel bad, there is not only a consequence of losing yourself, but also of being hurt by yourself intentionally as punishment. Every time you try to feel better, you try to escape yourself and in doing so, you abandon yourself. Can you trust someone who abandons you? No. In order to trust ourselves we need to prove to ourselves that we will not try to escape ourselves when we feel negative emotion. We will sit with the emotion and be with ourselves exactly as we are unconditionally. I teach a way to do this in my video titled “healing the emotional body. If you begin to stop abandoning yourself when you are experiencing negative emotion, you will come to trust that you will always be there for yourself. You will feel a deep sense of inner peace arise within you.
The next part of the equation of STAY (stop abandoning yourself), is to develop healthy boundaries. The holy grail of self-trust is boundaries. Having a sense of self vs. other is part of participating in this physical dimension. The individual perspective and experience is what is currently serving the expansion of this universe. And so, we perceive a difference between ourselves and the rest of the world. This individual perspective is a kind of boundary that defines us from everything else. We have heard again and again from self-help experts and psychologists that it is crucial to our wellbeing to develop healthy boundaries. But what are boundaries really? Boundaries are guidelines for how someone relates the self to the rest of the world. They are rules of conduct built out of a mix of beliefs, opinions, attitudes, past experiences and social learning. Personal boundaries operate in two directions, affecting both the incoming and outgoing interactions between people. Personal boundaries help to define an individual by outlining likes and dislikes and what is right for them personally or wrong for them personally. Defining these things helps us to know how we will and wont allow ourselves to be treated by others.
Here are some signs that you have unhealthy boundaries
*Saying no when you mean yes or yes when you mean no.
*Feeling guilty when you do say no.
*Acting against your integrity or values in order to please.
*Not speaking up when you have something to say.
*Adopting another person’s beliefs or ideas so you are accepted.
*Not calling out someone who mistreats you.
*Accepting physical touch or sex when you don’t want it.
*Allowing yourself to be interrupted or distracted to accommodate another person’s immediate wants or needs.
*Giving too much just to be perceived as useful.
*Becoming overly involved in someone’s problems or difficulties.
*Allowing people to say things to you or in front of you that make you uncomfortable.
*Not defining and communicating your emotional needs in your relationships.
The biggest issue related to boundaries isn’t that other people violate our boundaries, it’s that we violate our own boundaries. By letting someone violate our boundaries, we violate our own boundaries. This is self-betrayal. If you go against your personal boundaries, you violate yourself, you abandon yourself and you allow self-hate to rule the day.
I’m going to simplify the concept of boundaries and make them very easy for you to understand. Your boundaries are defined by your feelings. Your feelings will always tell you whether a boundary of yours has been violated, no matter what kind of boundary it is. For example, if someone said something that hurt you, it means they crossed an emotional boundary and you will feel hurt, which is your indication that your boundaries need to be re assessed. Another example could be, someone asks you to a party and you feel as if you don’t want to go, but you go anyway, you feel bad, which is your indication that you have violated your own boundary. This is why it is so crucial to be in touch with how you feel all day every day.
We can think of a boundary as an imaginary line that uniquely defines and separates your personal happiness, your personal integrity, your personal desires, your personal needs and therefore most importantly, your personal truth from the rest of the universe. He, who does not listen to and respect what he himself feels, violates his own boundaries. He, who does not listen to and respect what others feel, violates other people’s boundaries. It is as simple as that. So practice really listening to and feeling how things feel. Listen to what your feelings are telling you. They are speaking to your personal truth. It is crucial that we not only know who we really are and what we really want but also that we know that we are known for who we are and what we really want by others. When we are ashamed of who we are and what we want, we have poor boundaries and we are shamed for whom we are by others all the time. The person who has no self-trust, was the person whose feelings were invalidated as a child.
Here is a common scenario: A child begins to feel angry because their parent is always working and never has time to be with them. The child expresses that anger and is invalidated, the parent says “I spend more time with you than any other parent that I know spends with their child” and the child is shamed for being ungrateful. The child learns that the way they feel is not true and that they should be ashamed for feeling the way they feel. Anger is not acceptable. So the child creates a false self that is cannot express anger and who says “thank you” all the time. Over time, he or she believes that who they really are is happy and grateful. They have never really admitted to the fact that deep down, they truly feel angry. So how do you know if you have set up a false self? You fear other people thinking negatively of you. Ask yourself these questions: Do I know what I really want? Do I let other people tell me what to think or believe and how to feel? Do I do things I don’t really want to do and say yes when I really want to say no or say no when I really want to say yes? Am I afraid to let people know how I really feel? Am I afraid of people thinking negatively of me?
Beginning to care how you feel, pay attention to how you feel and honor how you feel, is like Pandora’s box. You will not only begin to trust yourself, but your life can never be the same once you do. Trusting yourself is a process. So let it be a process. Trusting yourself is not something that you can suddenly wake up and decide to do. It is the inevitable byproduct of gradually making changes to the way you think and the way that you live your life."
Some quotes that could be from this book. Intriguing.
From The Afterlife of Billy Fingers a book by annie kagan
"Human consciousness is somewhat linear. Looks at things one by one. Education for example does not come easy. We have to scan miles of lines on a computer screen or in a book, to comprehend aspects of nature.
The universe does not come at us in lines. It comes at us in a multidimensional continuum. In which everything is happening everywhere, all at the same time. And it comes at much too quickly, to be translated into lines of print. And that is our limitation as far as intellectual or scientific life is concerned.
The computer will greatly speed up linear scanning. But it's still linear scanning. And so long as we are stuck with that form of wisdom, we cannot deal with more than a few variables, at once.
A variable is one linear process.
Linear consideration is a limited way of dealing with multi-dimensionality."
But negativity has to be processed before being employed. If negativity is employed in its raw form, that means you take decisions based on politics and negativity, and so you can't expect quality in return.
Processing negativity is not difficult or complicated. But it requires effort. And one of the main requirements is maintaining the best possible body chemistry.
The best possible body chemistry means the best possible brain chemistry.
And J Krishnamutri...finally a spiritual teacher who can talk without cracking jokes.
Infinite Waters...diving deep...
The past is as mystical, they say, as the future. And if you really want to go deep into the past, you cannot stop until you reach the creation of the universe itself, assuming it had a starting point.
Like the famous scientist Carl Sagan said, 'If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
So you are that apple pie. I am that apple pie. And to make this apple pie, you have to go right to the beginning of the universe, and if it had no beginning, well, you're looking at infinity itself, each time you look in the mirror.
WHY ARE WE COSMIC? DOES THIS CLAIM HAVE ANY RATIONALE? ANY SUBSTANCE?
The water we drink everyday was formed not on earth but in the stars, billions of years back.
We are maybe 65% water.
The elements in our body were formed not on earth but in the core of stars and supernova explosions, billions of years back and millions of light years away.
So we are deeply entrenched, deeply rooted in the cosmos itself. We are made of stellar material.
And if our physical form is made of material that is billions of years old, so is the core of our psychological construct - the OBSERVER. Scientifically speaking, the OBSERVER emerges from biology, (even animals have observing powers). Mystical traditions say the observer precedes biology.
Whatever your beliefs are - the point is - the OBSERVER exists.
This post is on how to nurture the OBSERVER.
I believe that every moment is perfect because we are part of a process that started 13 billion years back, at least according to science. If we go by buddhism, we are part of a process that never had a beginning. Eternal.
Assuming we began 13 billion years back, the same intelligence that was operating 13 billion years back, is operating even now, in every atom of the universe...
There is obviously intelligence at work in cosmic phenomena much like there is intelligence at work in earthly phenomena like the ecosystem for example.
It would be the same intelligence of course. A field of infinite intelligence and infinite capability. (If nature's play is not intelligent, how come scientists are still struggling with it? Why weren't all the answers sorted out by now?)
Assuming that this intelligence is blind would be an error. If qualities like sight and hearing did not precede humans, how did humans get it? From nothing?
So it's not wrong, I believe, to look at the concept of the "observer" seriously.
Who is the Observer? When did he (or she) begin? Why should we encourage and nurture the observer?
Such answers are not easy and exist mostly in the realm of meditation, as is the popular belief in certain circles.
Teal Swan, in her video (below) on "Mindfulness Meditation", is trying to instill in us the importance and use of meditation.
That it is about developing our ability to view the world, and ourselves as a detached observer.
Of course, we all know how to view ourselves from the point of view of an external observer. The question is, is our self observation objective? Detached?
And what is the use of observing ourselves and the world from a detached point of view?
Richard Wayne (Dick Van Dyke) in Mary Poppins, 1964, age 40, dancing with arthritis in his legs. In 1967, he was told he had severe arthritis, with only a few years left before getting a walker:
Many people are too mind possessed to react much to inputs from the world. They follow their generic positions most of the time.
