WHO OR WHAT IS STOPPING YOU?
Have you ever wondered why most people expect the worse to happen and why we suffer so much? Suffering is the payoff that we get for being miserable in order to be happy. Make no mistake, there is a tremendous payoff in being miserable and having to suffer.
Suffering is socially acceptable behavior. It’s even encouraged! Perhaps your whole belief system is based on that. Have you ever noticed how miserable some of our love songs are, such as, “The Worst You Ever Gave Me Was the Best I Ever Had.” The most popular greeting cards are the ones
that have a lone tree or a lone bird on them, and the most popular love songs are the songs that talk about loneliness.
Many people go to sleep at night replaying role dialogues about the way a boss is going to fire them, or about the disease that they might get, or about the loved one who is going to leave them.
The solution is to recognize that we have a choice about turning away from negative anticipation. I am not referring to ignoring problems, because it is important to face the challenges that we have today. But if we face them with clarity of mind that is free from negative anticipation, we have infinitely more wisdom and energy with which to handle these problems.
Breaking the Pattern of Worry
The most regrettable aspect of worry is that we’ve lived through the anticipated event before it ever happens. When the event finally does occur, it’s rarely as we anticipated. We have therefore unnecessarily experienced it in the worst possible way hour by hour, and day by day.
Even when things are good, we worry that they won’t last. Or, we create a beautiful relationship with another individual and through worry destroy it out of the fear of losing, or we have a marvelous job and we’re very successful at it, but we worry until something goes wrong and we lose it.
When you are worried, ask yourself, “Am I worrying constructively? Is this telling me something that needs to be changed? Or, is it out of fear; fear of loss, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of failure, or fear of what may not be in the future? Face your worry and see it as an illusion. It cannot exist unless you give it power and give it life.
Worry really makes no sense at all. So why is it that we tend to believe in the worst? Why do we leap to illogical conclusions to the unlikely negative possibilities? Have you ever noticed that we often say that something is “too good” to be true, but never say that something is “too bad” to be true? This shows, at a deep inner level, that we usually expect the worse.
Worry is a habit that we’ve picked up through imitation. It seems that deep down inside we do not have a fundamental trust that Life supports us. Our bottom-line belief is that Life is out to get us, and if we don’t worry, we will be caught off guard.
Worry is a Choice
Put very simply, worry is a choice. You always have the choice to worry or not to worry. Worry comes from the belief that you are powerless. But the truth about you is you’re never powerless unless you think you’re powerless.
The problem with worry is that we attract the very thing we are trying to avoid. We live a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Life keeps its agreement with us through our beliefs, because whatever we think about, we bring about. Life is like a mirror. It reflects back whatever image we present to it.
You Always Know What To Do
Perhaps you are worried because you don’t know what to do. Have no fear of not knowing what to do. When you stop resisting the unknown, you will begin to know what to do. Whenever you have a problem or a crisis, look for your own solution. Do not share it with others. You dilute the intensity of a problem by spreading it around, and
you dilute the power and understanding necessary to remove it. Of course, this is exactly what everyone else does. But you no longer want to be confused by everyone else.
There may be times when a problem in business, finances, health or relationships seems like a mountain in comparison to the particle of truth that you presently possess. Don’t believe it for one second. Behind that particle of truth is the whole truth. It will reveal itself to you, if you will stay with it.
The next time you find yourself in a perplexing situation, do something entirely different. Notice first of all how your mind seeks anxiously for an answer, or relief, and for reassurance. Now, break this pattern. Simply remain silent and say, “What if I do not need the kind of answer that I assume that I do?” And then stick to that.
Do nothing else, and you will be amazed at the new solutions that will be revealed to you through your intuition. When you say, “I don’t know what to do,” it usually means you are afraid to make a choice.
At a deeper level you do know what to do, but you are afraid of making mistakes or what others will think if you carry out your own solutions. This attempt to escape the problem is the problem. See the logic of this. When you see that you are the problem – that you are one with the problem and not separate from the problem, and that you should stop trying to escape the problem – it will be resolved.
Finding the Real Problem
Do not try to use your memory or past experiences to solve problems. Why? When you try to use what you already know to solve a problem you are using the same logic and reasoning to solve the problem that created the problem in the first place!
When a person says that he or she has a problem, there’s usually a deeper problem beneath it. People seldom mention the deeper problem, partly because they are unaware of it and partly because they dislike admitting it. Always look to the deeper problem or to the causative factor.
Never ask, “What can I do about my problem?” In all the history of mankind, no one has ever found the answer to that question, because none exists. Always ask, “What can I do with myself?” This is an honest question and will attract an honest answer. The mind becomes panicky when it meets a problem that it cannot solve. And in its anxiety to relieve the tension, it usually turns toward a false solution, which creates another problem. And so we keep going in circles.
Finding the Solution
There’s a way to end it. Do not force a solution. A lot of solutions will be revealed to you. The right one will be revealed to you if you are not in a panic to find a solution. By shaking a compass you can make its needle swing around to any number of wrong directions. When you stop agitating it the needle settles down to point to its true and natural direction. This is a good lesson in problem solving.
We can practice quiet refusal to accept agitation and confusion as normal and necessary. Suppose a patient consults a doctor about an illness, and the doctor says, “Very well, I’m going to prescribe some medicine for your neighbor.” And the patient replies, “Thank you, I’ll feel much better.”
This absurd logic is played a million times every day in the minds of unconscious people. But few see it. An unconscious person always thinks that he is going to feel better if someone else changes. But the conscious or wise person realizes that medicine can heal the patient only if taken by the patient.
People say that, “He made me unhappy,” or “It’s her fault.” But the only way to get rid of the self-punishing illusion is to ponder day and night upon this simple fact: When you bump your knee against a chair, the pain occurs because of what happened in your knee, not what happened in the chair.
Taking Responsibility for Change
It’s true that there are a lot of events in our lives over which we have little control. However, we do have infinite control over how we react to these events, especially if they relate to the people in our lives. We can’t change the way people are. And we shouldn’t be able to because they have a right to be who they are. We can, though, change the way in which we relate to them.
Maybe your mother liked your sister better than you. Maybe your parents wanted a boy and you are a girl, so you disappointed two people when you arrived. Maybe your father was an alcoholic, or wanted to be. But that’s over; that’s behind you. You may say, “I agree, but it’s different in my case. They are creating my misery. They did it to me. My mate is doing it to me.
My boss is doing this to me. It’s not my fault.” Well, sadly enough, if you keep blaming others, you give up your power to change. And at the end of your life you can always say, “I gave them the best years of my life, and I got nothing back.” Then you can be self-righteous. Now that’s marvelous if you think the world cares, but the fact is that no one care but you. Being in charge of your life is being responsible for the quality of your life. It’s being responsible for everything that happens to you.
Now, responsibility is the opposite of dependency. When we are born, we are totally dependent upon another person for our survival. We
are unlike the baby turtle that can take care of itself as soon as it’s hatched from the egg. It never sees its parents. As human beings we cannot do this. We are helpless. We have to learn the reality of taking care of ourselves. We have to be supported and learn independence. We accomplish this by building a foundation that is based on self- esteem and self-reliance.
Emotional Dependency or Self-Reliance?
Most of us learn emotional dependency instead of self-reliance. We figure it out early in life that, “If you approve of me, and if I can duplicate your beliefs and your values, then I will earn your approval.
And if I earn your approval, then you will love me and take care of me.” So the decision that we make is, “You take care of me, you nurture me, and I’ll do what you want.” It’s a scary feeling to be in a position in which you realize that your life depends on the good nature of another human being. Many of us were raised in an environment of “shape up or ship out.” In other words, “Be what I want you to be or get out.”
What others think of you has no meaning whatsoever. It is all part of a stage performance. The frightened actors and actresses have mutual contracts for keeping the drama going. If you will leave the stage and just be yourself, you will lose your fear of not getting approval. Only an actor worries over a bad performance.
Emotional dependency comes out of our need to be right and our need to get approval. It comes out of our need to be emotionally dependent so that we can feel that we are being loved and being taken care of. This discovery is valuable, because it indicates an awareness that nothing outside of yourself can provide you with true self-worth.
There is no one in charge of your life but you, unless you give your power away. And when you give your power away, people will try to control your life. They will convince you that they know more than you do, and that you should listen to them for advice and counsel. But have you every noticed how miserable your unpaid advisors are?
They look like they have it together, but they only have a good act to cover up the fact that they don’t know what to do either. As long as they are controlling you, they don’t have to take care of their own life. The fact is that no one can tell you what to do, and no one can give you something that you don’t already have.
No One Can Give You What You Want
Tension arises when we want something from someone else. Think of someone from whom you want nothing at all and notice your ease toward him or her. Tension appears when we want something from another person, such as love, security, approval, recognition or agreement.
The belief is that this person can fulfill us, but he or she cannot. Self-fulfillment abolishes the need to seek security from others and allows us to be at ease with everyone. You don’t have tension when you ask the baker for bread or the salesman for shoes. You pay your money and the transaction is complete.
But ask for love, security and other psychological needs and notice the increased tension. This is because it is a wrong move. Our inner system is trying to tell us so. Now, why is it wrong?
It is wrong for the tree to ask for the characteristics of a tree. It is wrong for us to ask for love, security or anything else because these things are not separate from our own true nature. This is an important truth to understand.
Getting to know oneself is the key to a successful life. When you learn to love yourself, you won’t need to seek love from others. Instead of seeking love, you will be able to be more loving. A person who knows
how to love cannot be controlled. If you do not want anything from anyone you cannot be exploited because there is no place that anybody can get to you to control you. When you desire nothing from another, some people will have difficulty relating to you because they can’t control you. Yet this is the true road to emotional freedom and self- reliance.
Risking Rejection
Sometimes we are frightened to be all that we can be because it upsets other people. We say, “Well, I don’t want to hurt them.” But understand this: People use the phrase, “Don’t hurt me,” as a way to get you to continue to do what they want you to do.
They say things like “How can you leave me all alone” or “How could you do that?” or “How could you hurt me that way?” People try to manipulate you by saying, “I can’t make it without you.
You are the cause of my happiness,” and so on. But the truth is you don’t hold someone else’s happiness in your hands, and no one holds your happiness in their hands. When you are being yourself you run the risk of rejection, and the more you fear rejection, the more you will seek approval.
Risk rejection at every opportunity and this will free you to be yourself. Learn from rejection, not from acceptance. Start in small ways to risk rejection. Risk rejection of your favorite ideas while watching quietly how if affects you. This type of observation breaks down the walls of limited thinking.
What Does It Mean To Be Conscious?
Observation is one of the most powerful tools for self- transformation. Observation helps us to be more conscious of our lives. What does it mean to be conscious? It means to see things as they really are, not according to personal preference, imagination or borrowed beliefs.
The chief barrier to consciousness is the delusion that we’re already conscious. Admitting that we are not fully conscious is the first thing we need to do to get out of this trap. When we admit we may not know everything, we open the door to increased knowledge and solutions to our problems.
Adjust Your Mental Picture
There are numerous studies that show that no one is too old or too young to change their beliefs, concepts, values or pictures.
Most of the suffering in life comes from trying to change outer circumstances before changing our inner beliefs. Actually, you can change anything about yourself quite quickly. All you have to do is give up the belief system that says that it takes a long time to change.
Most of us treat our TV sets better than we treat ourselves. When our TV needs adjusting, we make the necessary adjustments so that we have a clearer picture. Most of us need periodic readjusting and reshaping.
This is what a creative person has to do from time to time. Remember, you are the most important creative activity in your life, and no one can treat you better than you are willing to treat yourself.
You can tell a person a hundred times that he needs to change his beliefs, but nothing will happen until that person tells himself the very same thing. This point is reached when the suffering becomes unbearable.
When he has run out of hiding places he will gladly exchange false beliefs for reality. This point is frightening at first because he must give up his old beliefs and everything that is familiar and comfortable to journey toward the giant question mark. And sometimes this creates acceptable anxiety.
Keep in mind that anxiety is part of you. It is not bigger than you are. It is only one of your feelings. You have many feelings and you are bigger than any of them.
The first twinge of anxiety is a tip-off for us to pay attention. It’s a signal. Don’t run away from it. It’s a feeling that we are most tempted to ignore or evade. After all, anxiety can be uncomfortable, so the temptation is to pretend that we are not feeling it.
Besides, most of us have been told not to be scared. But you can never be more grown-up than when you look at your anxiety and take charge of it. When you stop running away from it and face it, it has a way of shrinking to manageable size. And that’s the time to use your courage.
Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway. You are much more likely to trip over your anxiety if you shovel it under the rug than when you put it out in front of you.
There’s a fine line between anxiety and excitement. If you don’t let anxiety stop you, you can nudge it over the line to excitement. And that very excitement will allow you to be more creative. But don’t wait for anxiety to turn to panic. Be the rider, not the horse. If you have the courage to welcome your anxiety instead of retreating at the first twinge, you will be greatly rewarded. It will open new avenues and new possibilities for you to express your unlimited potential.
Be the Cause, Not the Effect
You do not have to be the effect of outer circumstances and conditions. The following illustration shows you that you can rise above limiting and destructive circumstances and conditions.
An earthquake is a mechanical activity. So everything on its mechanical level vibrates to it resulting in collapsed buildings and smashed automobiles. But an earthquake cannot harm the air because the air resides above the earthquake level. Now see the tremendous significance here. If you reside at the level of higher consciousness or right thinking that is based
on truth, you ultimately cannot be harmed by anything on a mechanical or a negative level. The proof of this is plain.
Most people feel they lack the intelligence to find the right way for them, but this is merely misunderstanding. Intelligence has nothing to do with college degrees or reading books. True intelligence is a willingness to exchange a fallacy for a fact. We dislike admitting our lack of knowledge because we fear it would endanger our psychological security. But we fail to see that our reluctance to change does the very opposite. Instead of providing security it keeps us insecure.
Do Not Fear Uncertainty
Do not fear uncertainty. There is never anything to fear in uncertainty. It’s quite possible to have a thousand uncertainties and not have a single fear. There are so many bewildered people who say they don’t know what to believe. Not knowing what to believe is the key to freedom. Most belief systems are a combination of superstition, gullibility and mental laziness. Actually, you don’t have to believe in anything but yourself because your are one with All-knowing Intelligence.
If you will give up your old beliefs you will be open to new ideas that will greatly enhance your life. We simply need to find, to see and to know. A ship that’s tied to a dock cannot explore the land. And a person tied to a belief cannot see anything beyond the belief. As the saying goes, “If you see, you will do, because there is no difference between the two.”
Understand the Truth by Being One with It
A Scientist understands what it means to be a scientist, because he is one. Likewise, we understand the truth by being one with it. To know about the truth is not the same as being one with the truth. To know about it is to have only a mental knowledge of the truth. To be ONE with it is to be the truth itself with no separation between the Knower and what is known.
The fundamental principle for creation is oneness. Every great teacher since the beginning of time has shared this message. You cannot be separate from anything or anyone. There isn’t anything in life that’s separate from us. How is this possible? Because we are all ONE with Creative Intelligence.
We create according to our self-acceptance. Self-acceptance comes from knowing who we are. And when we know who we are, we can create anything we want. What we have right now is what we’ve been willing to accept for ourselves up to this point. Whatever we are willing to put up with is exactly what we will have. What we are open to is open to us. What we are closed to is closed to us. No one can keep our good from us. Others may stop us temporarily, but only we can do it permanently.
Watch Out for the NIOP’s
As you become more aware of what you’re capable of being, there will be those individuals who will feel threatened and try to stop you. It is very threatening to be around someone whose life is working if yours is not. The way that most people handle this is to try to bring others down to their level of negative thinking. These people are the
NIOP’s of the world. N-I-O-P means people who adhere to the Negative Influence of Other People. NIOP’s are everywhere, and they’re dying for a little corner of your mind. They love to plant their negative seeds in your mind and watch them grow, until eventually you become a NIOP too. Their self-destructive behavior spreads like a contagious disease.
NIOP’s are not born, they are made. And more are being made very day. It seems that every NIOP on the face of this earth feels a moral obligation to bear witness to negativity. And they’ll work day and night to find some unsuspecting, unaware and unconscious person to infect. Be aware of them, and make a commitment to yourself to absolutely establish an NIOP-proof consciousness. Learn to look at the positive side of every situation. No matter what’s going on in your life, there are positive things that you can focus on. Some people jump from bed in the morning and say, “Good morning, God,” and some people say, “Good God, it’s morning.” You always have a choice!
What Are You Telling Yourself?
Do you say, “It’s a great day and I feel great?” Or, are you one of those people who say, “It’s a great day considering…?” Again, it all has to do with attitudes and beliefs. Our beliefs keep us from achieving what we would really like to achieve.
People say, “I’ve tried. Heaven knows I’ve tried! But why is it that everything that I do fails?” Then they say, “I’m going to try one more time,” and that doesn’t work either. Why doesn’t it work? It doesn’t work because they haven’t set up the proper condition of belief that will allow them to go where they want to go. They haven’t looked to and believed in where they were going. They are not concentrating on where they want to go. Instead, they are focusing on where they don’t want to go.
Most world leaders talk about what is wrong with the world. But rarely does any of them step up and take a look at the overall goal or end result to see where we are and where we want to arrive so that we know what we will have to do to get there.
Keep Your Focus on the Ultimate Goal
This brings us to an important question: What is your ultimate goal? In other words, what do you really want?
Now, please pause here for a minute. If you cannot answer this question, there’s no way for you to begin your journey.
The solution is to determine exactly what you want and go for it. Can you articulate what you want your life to look like? What is important to you? If you can answer this honestly, you are off to a good start. And as you do this please treat yourself with kindness and respect. Don’t put yourself down if you haven’t been living the life that you really want. What you have done in the past has nothing to do with what you would like to do in the present. Respect the life that you’ve been living even though you might want to change it. It’s all part of loving yourself.
Only You Know What You Really Want
Suppose you want to know what Hawaii is like, so you ask several people who have been there. One person tells you about the beaches, another about the mountains. A third tells you about the people that live there. While this is helpful, you want to know more, so you take a trip to Hawaii and you see Hawaii for yourself. What you see when you get there is not the same as what you have heard. This illustrates your own inner thinking process. Others can advise you, but
only you know what to do. You must yearn to see for yourself, and what you see for yourself becomes yours. The way to do something is to simply start doing it. Remember what we discussed earlier – You don’t need details about how to do it, just start. Let your creative subconscious take care of the details.
Someone once asked me what I thought was one of the most destructive behavior patterns a person could have. There are many serious and self-destructive forms of behavior, but I would have to say that blind obedience tops the list. To me the most dangerous thing in the world is teaching people to do things without thinking for themselves. This mentality caused the death of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany. What the world needs more than anything else are people who question and think for themselves. Learn to challenge everything. Even question what I’ve just said.
Never doubt your desires. The only way that you are ever going to know if something is “right” for you is to experience it. If it is not the “right” thing, you will find out in time, and then you can make corrections. Life is a process of making corrections. However most people fear making a mistake and are unwilling to correct so they never get where they want to go. It is my opinion that at the moment of your death you will not be as sorry for the things that you have done incorrectly, as you will for the things that you wanted to do but never did.
No One Cares But You!
When you decide your destiny, oftentimes the tape in your head will play. And that tape will say, “What will they think? What will they say?” Well, guess what? It doesn’t matter. Ultimately you have to pay the price for whatever you do or don’t do in your life. Since you suffer
the consequences or reap the rewards, doesn’t it make sense that you are the one who should decide you destiny?
And the interesting thing is that the other people are not as interested in our lives as we would like to believe. While you are worried about what they’re thinking, they’re wondering what you’re thinking about them. So it is a neurotic trip that we can bypass.
Life is a Drama
When you do not understand why people act as they do, try to see life as a drama in which the actors and actresses are following a written script with monotonous precision, never questioning their parts. If heartache is written into the scene, heartache will always be there as long as the players follow the script. But life is not a fixed drama. It only appears so because we don’t question the roles that we are playing. The way to change the role is to change the script, and you can rewrite the script if you don’t like the part.
Before we end this chapter, we want to remind ourselves that nothing or no one can stop us from creating the life that we desire. The only one who can ultimately stop us is ourselves and our own limited beliefs. Make a decision right now that you are open, responsive and receptive to new ideas and beliefs that will support you in getting to where you want to go and that you are willing to give up anything that limits you in any way.