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Conversations For Change

Weekly Tidbit: Avoiding Guilt

5/26/2010

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Guilt is one of those emotions that nobody really likes to feel, but sometimes our attempts to avoid feeling it can cause more suffering than the experience of being with the emotion. Having roots in both cognitive and emotional process, guilt results when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard and feels responsibility for that violation. It is interesting to note that guilt is not dependent on the accuracy of that belief and it is often associated with anxiety and depression. So, if I feel guilty when I say "no" because of something I was taught to believe as a child, I may find myself saying "yes" to a lot of things as an adult that I don't want to do in order to avoid re-experiencing that childhood fear and pain. Often guilt has been used as a covert attempt to control behavior and operates beneath conscious awareness, so we may not even recognize what is motivating our actions.

In many ways, guilt is a form of resentment that is primarily directed at self rather than at others. We resist against accepting something that happened, and tell ourselves that we should have done or not done something to make it different. When unresolved and allowed to build, stored guilt can reach overwhelming proportions that reinforce avoidance of feelings and may lead to addictive coping patterns. Like other resentments, guilt can function as a defense against feeling helpless or as a kind of self punishment in an attempt to make amends. While we are powerless to change the past, perhaps guilt is designed to be part of our emotional guidance system to help us create a better future. 

In order to be able to effectively utilize guilt in our emotional GPS, those collections of old guilt need to be defused so there are no bombs waiting to be detonated. Energy work can generate powerful and non-threatening release. Talking about guilt feelings with someone you trust or expressing your feelings in art or dance or music can make the feelings more manageable. Prayer, meditation, breath work, psychotherapy, cognitive exercises, and other techniques offer ways to release and reorganize emotional holdings. Taking action to make amends for past behavior can be emotionally freeing, either directly with those involved or by doing something good for someone if it is not feasible or wise to make direct amends. The definition of "amend" is literally "to change", and most often guilt based amends will need to be made to yourself. Perhaps the biggest change in behavior is to be able to listen to our feelings as immediate and concise input about our behavior so that we can modify our actions in ways that better serve how we want to live. To forgive past guilty feelings and no longer need to avoid them or use them as punishment sets us free to employ our emotions gratefully and gently as part of our inner guidance system. 


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Weekly Tidbit: Biography and Biology

5/19/2010

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"Your biography becomes your biology -- you are one and the same with your life and your history. Events that you have not yet reconciled, haven't forgiven, haven't let go of, are carried in that debt in your cell tissue." Carolyn Myss, a medical intuitive and author, frequently talks and writes about how our experiences and the beliefs about those experiences affect our day to day living. Perhaps those chronic aches and pains, the stiffness in our joints are the result of cell tissue debt, of energy blockages that developed in response to unresolved stress or trauma. 

A long standing pattern of energy holding often manifests as chronic pain. Fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder characterized by widespread pain and fatigue, is an example of how disabling and isolating a collection of energy blockages can be. The word "fatigue" is often defined literally as a lack of energy. Fibromyalgia is controversial in that it does not easily fit western medical models; some people view it as a central nervous system problem, other see it as musculoskeletal, others as psychiatric. There is no easy cure because it needs to be treated as a whole person disease, a biopsychosocial  approach that does not always conflate with the symptom orientation of western medicine. Most autoimmune disorders have puzzling and complicated components. Perhaps these "diseases" are asking us to look at the bigger picture of our lives rather than to dissect them. 

Let's say you are an organic system with a thousand units of life force energy flowing through your body. This flow of electromagnetic energy digests food and carries nutrients, maintains memories and thoughts, heals our cells, generates our activities, powers our heartbeat, moves our lungs... you get the picture. Many of our emotional structures develop at an early age, before we can really assess the truth or validity of their context. So if you came to believe that you were not good enough, not supported, not loved, or that the world was not safe, a significant amount of your thousand units of energy is diverted from the flow and goes into maintaining those belief structures. If you are financing resentments about things that happened in your life, another chunk of life force goes to keeping those programs alive. Indulging in stressful activities like overwork or smoking or drinking takes another chunk of energy units, as does feeling bad about those habits, past or present. Holding in your feelings or maintaining a protective defensive attitude drains still more. Like a computer burdened by out of date software, things slow down, systems crash. Not much energy is left for joyous exploration and celebration. 

Illness is not always bad. It is often our best and most appropriate teacher, just as pain is a tremendous motivator for change. Please don't blame yourself for "creating a disease"; you are only sidetracking more of your life force energy into stagnant resentment against yourself. What if you choose instead to see your history as an opportunity to gain freedom, to create a flow of energy that allows you feel more alive, to identify with your life force rather than your wounds? In our culture, we seem overly identified with our injuries, our illnesses, and an astoundingly huge part of our economy is dependent on disease and pain. Despite our claims to desire health there is sometimes an unconscious resistance based on fear that we will be alone and apart from society if we no longer have our wounds to talk about. We want the pain to stop, but we are entering the realm of the unknown if we let go of all these familiar thoughts and patterns and step outside the consensual reality of suffering.

As Carolyn Myss said, "We don't know yet what it's like to have self-esteem in such a way that we celebrate our strengths, celebrate our creativity. We still go at it through our wounds. We still don't know what it's like to feel healthy without feeling embarrassed by our strengths. Until we develop a model of health that says we can have pride in being creative, strong, and intelligent without apologizing, without feeling shame, we will use our wounds as a privilege." One way to step in a more positive direction is simply to do more of what makes you truly feel good, of what gets your juices flowing. Choose to consciously direct energy into joyous exploration and celebration. Do yoga, sing, ride horses, dance, make music, smile, and above all learn to forgive and let go; resentments are perhaps the biggest and most dangerous of energy suckers. If you need help to further this shift towards living well, email me to schedule a free half hour phone consultation. As someone who once suffered from chronic pain and an autoimmune disorder, I understand what it is like to feel stuck and at a loss for direction. 


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”  Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

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Weekly Tidbit: Achieving Your Goals

5/12/2010

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As a life skills coach, my job is to help people manifest their goals, to create more of what they want in their lives. One of the most challenging aspects in achieving goals is simply staying on task. It is easy to get distracted, or to get caught up in being busy with work and day to day activities. Once you have defined a specific goal, two simple focus points can be very helpful in the process of conscious creation.

The first is understanding and differentiating between urgency and  importance. Urgent things demands our attention now, they call for an immediate response. Important refers to something that has significant value and is likely to have a profound effect on success, survival or well being. These two criteria may overlap or they may be worlds apart, and a key to effective time management is attention to how these categories interface. Too often we have conditioned ourselves to respond to urgency whether or not it is important. A ringing telephone is a perfect example. It calls for our attention right now, and it may portend an important job offer or a recorded sales pitch. These days with the advent of caller ID, text messaging, and voice mail, it is easier to manage our phone time.... or is it? Stopping to each check messages or screening every call can still interrupt our focus and fragment our attention. 

Many people will say that the most valuable components of life are the relationships with the people they love. And far too often we hear regrets of not having given more time to nourishing and enjoying those relationships, of having gotten caught up in what seemed more urgent business  at the time. Taking a "bigger picture" perspective and allocating time and energy to important pursuits (such as making the time to talk with an open heart to those you love) can prevent situations from escalating into crisis or regret. Attending to exercise and emotional well being activities on a regular basis can prevent a health crisis down the road, the same way that beginning to organize tax papers in the early months of the year can avert a stressful time crunch in mid April. This focus invites you to schedule daily or weekly time commitments to what is truly important in your life.

The second focal point is to continually ask yourself whether what you are doing is bringing you closer to your goal or taking you away from accomplishing your intention. Be willing to be curious about this question without judging yourself. It means paying attention to both the long term and short term impact of our actions, and making conscious decisions in the moment rather than reacting on impulse and habit. For example, if your goal is to have a better relationship with someone, this focus invites you to ask whether your responses to this person serve you, and if not, to replace them with better choices. It might be helpful to target some of your reactive habits that you can identify as moving you away from your goal (such as blaming, criticizing, cold shouldering, etc.) and make a list of possible alternative behaviors  with which to replace them (taking a time out to get perspective, sharing an honest feeling, taking a deep centering breath before you speak). By paying attention to your direction, you can begin to recognize and inhibit patterns that sabotage your intended goal and redirect yourself to more productive actions that will eventually become new habits and make your goal a reality. 

Let's put both techniques together and use the example of the common goal of having a clean and better organized living space. If you dedicate 10 minutes every day to doing something to improve your home environment, you will progress towards that goal. If you notice yourself leaving clutter on the counter and inhibit that action and redirect to putting those things away, you take another step closer to your goal. On the other hand, if you allow the clutter to accumulate, you take a step away your goal. If you ignore the mess until you can no longer function in the environment, it becomes urgent and may generate feelings of overwhelm or self depreciation. Our lives are the composite of a multitude of moments, a cascade of small steps, and it is within your power to choose your directions. If you have trouble with this, ask for help. It can make a huge difference to have someone to be accountable to, someone to assist your focus in remaining on, or returning to, the task. 


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Weekly Tidbit: Beginner\'s Mind

5/5/2010

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Shoshin, a Buddhist word usually translated as 'Beginner's Mind', refers to having an attitude of openness, enthusiasm, and  freedom from conceptual encumbrances.  It refers to the cultivation of an attitude or spirit where our perception is neither contaminated or limited by our cognitive thoughts and beliefs. The classic metaphor for this is the image of being unable to add more liquid to a cup that is already full; we need to first empty the cup. Beginner's Mind is a regarded as a highly effective way to learn something new, and it is often challenging to the human thought process with its tendency to try to make something fit into an existing schemata. 

Approaching something with a preconceived notion of how it will turn out alters the experience and limits the possibility of new outcomes. The ego mind, the part of us that is attached to being right in order to survive in the physical world, will often make assumptions about a situation and then set out to prove them true.  For example, if we have had an experience that leads us to conclude that horses are dangerous, our expectations will have us looking for things to be fearful of when we are around horses. We may misinterpret a horse's behavior to fit our beliefs and miss the equine beauty, strength, and intelligence because we are busy trying to protect ourselves from our own fearful imaginings. And if the object of our projected fear is sensitive to it, the outcome may indeed prove self fulfilling. 

The  Zen story of the blind committee members each examining a portion of an elephant and coming to very different conclusions as to the nature of the beast further illustrates how thinking that we understand something limits our ability to truly understand it. The "been there, done that" concept of believing we can know the bigger picture from our small piece of limited experience leaves us with a conception of reality that is not accurate in terms of the whole picture. Cultivating Beginner's Mind can encourage us to open our awareness and allow the experience of the present moment without trying to fit it into the box of the past.

When we recognize that our ego mind has taken charge of a situation we can then choose to inhibit those limiting thoughts and  redirect our spirit to expand awareness, to inquiry and exploration instead of knowing and being right. If we ask questions and listen to the answers with curiosity and appreciation, we can explore the different points of view held by others in the situation. In the example above, we could put ourselves in the shoes of the horse and imagine his perspective. In a conflict with a friend, we could become willing to see things through their eyes for a few moments. We could even think about the thoughts of an impartial observer to stretch our awareness and options. Instead of trying to confirm what we already think we know, we can become curious about new and different experience. We can choose to become willing to empty our cup to make room for new information.

In the words of the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, "In the beginners mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few." One of my teachers used to say the same thing another way: "If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you always got". By allowing a new viewpoint and a clearer understanding of ourselves, Beginner's Mind can transform setbacks into something positive. If we accept responsibility for our disappointments and can look at our own limitations without judging them, we can glean a clearer understanding our ourselves that allows us to create new and more desirable experiences instead of repeating the old ones. 


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    Author

    Charly Hill is a Life Skills Coach and Self Empowerment Teacher.
    She has a MA in counseling and recently retired her California Marriage, Family and Child Therapist license. 

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