Soulgoal Missive, Year 1, No. 15, originally published in 2001
It was my first singing class. After performing my rendition of a song, my voice coach didn’t comment on my presentation but simply suggested that I approach it using different emotions. Although it was a reasonable request, a sinking feeling came over me and began to take me down with it.
I got through the evening but went home devastated as anguish overtook me far beyond what happened in the class. Three days later I still felt this sickening feeling within and knew that it was totally out of proportion from the event.
Then it hit me.
My (unconscious) interpretation of the comment triggered a belief that when I’m myself, I’m not good enough.
“Why can’t you be more like your cousins Kathy and Sharon?” was one of my mother’s mantras I grew up with — to be good enough I had to be like someone else.
My feelings turned from sadness to freedom as the light shined on this hidden side of me.
The casual remark served as an alarm clock to wake up an old pain after years of sleep. Unconsciously, it directed my actions and responses causing me to feel “I’m not good enough” although there was nothing in the present moment to validate it. After discovering the truth, my life changed.
I hadn’t seen one of my cousins for 18 years, even though she lives just a few hours from me. Yet two weeks after my discovery, I found myself visiting my aunt and her daughter.
Within minutes of our time together, I shared my story with her, and she replied, “Why would you ever want to be like us? The insinuation in our home was that you were special, and we wanted to be like you!”
How often do we create a false sense of reality accompanied by unnecessary limitations and anxiety?
There are so many reasons to experience fear these days, but how many of them are based on reality?
Fear arises from an obscure feeling that something will happen to us in the future that we won’t be able to handle. Then we attach a significance and interpretation that create pain.
The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
“You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.”
Eckhart Tolle,
Power of Now
What’s the antidote? Get free from allowing your thoughts to rule and instead be the master of what you think and feel.
How do we reclaim our dominion? Focus on the Now instead of some imagined future.
Truly be present and live in this moment in time. This means not obsessing over what happened in the past and not projecting in the future some theorized threat. We learn from the past and plan for the future. We are best equipped to deal with life situations when we are fully present.
Life is what it is. “Resistance is futile” and creates more pain.
We always have the ability to deal with whatever hand we are dealt, although as Mother Teresa said, “I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to disidentify with your thoughts, as if they are you and always the truth. Instead, be the observer of them. Experiment with the following exercise entitled “You Are NOT Your Thoughts.”
- Do you imagine that your future will be better or worse than it is now?
- Observe yourself focusing your attention into the future. Now shift your attention back to reading in this moment. Notice your ability to shift consciously between the future and present.
- The part of you that observes this shift is the real you. You can detach from your identification with your thinking at any moment by going into the observer state – the real you is doing the watching. You experience the real you only in the present moment.
- Whenever fear, anxiety, or other such emotion arises, switch to being the watcher of your thoughts and feelings. Even if you still feel trapped by them or feel stuck, you are on your road to freedom, gaining greater self-mastery with every step.
Observation of your thoughts breaks identification with them. You take control of your life instead of being led by fear and limitation. It’s a powerful tool.
With a zest for Life,
Virginia
Success Thought
“Getting there is half the fun; being there is all of it!”
Chauncey Gardner, in the movie Being There
Ready for more freedom?
You are more than enough!
Contact me for a free consultation at:
virginia@soulgoals.com
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but don’t know how, feel stuck or could
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