When you are full of fear and upset, you lose your effectiveness.
To have your dreams come true and to create a life that works, you need to take action. The challenge is to discover what action you need to take.
When you are in a state of fear and upset, you destroy your ability to see what needs to be done. You close down and get tunnel vision. All you can do is to fight, resist, hang on, or withdraw. Almost any action you take in this state makes your situation worse.
When we get upset, it looks like the upset is caused by what happened, but this is an illusion. Upsets are not caused by what happens. Upsets are caused by fighting and resisting what happens.
To see this in your life, select a recent upset. Now notice what would happen to the upset if, somehow, you were at peace with what happened. There would be no upset. There would be no upset, because the upset wasn't caused by what happened. The upset was caused by fighting and resisting what happened.
The moment you take away the fighting and resisting, the upset disappears. You restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness.
Now notice what would happen if someone spilled a glass of water on you. You would be wet, and you would be wet whether you liked it or not.
Your being wet is like any other circumstance. It's something that happens outside of you, and your feelings about it are totally irrelevant. Upsets, on the other hand, are located on the inside.
Since an upset is something that we experience on the inside, there has to be something on the inside that creates it. We create our upsets by fighting and resisting what happens.
Let's go back to the water. If you were at peace with being wet, there would be no upset. If you fought being wet, you would be upset, and the more you fought it, the more upset you would be.
The same is true with all the circumstances of your life. Nothing has the power to create an upset in you. Only you can do that.
So why do we fight and resist what happens?
We fight what happens, because our circumstances trigger a suppressed hurt from the past. To say this another way, our circumstances strike a nerve.
This is why different people get upset at different things. Different people have different sets of nerves that get triggered. This is also why the same type of upsets and the same self-sabotaging behavior keep showing up in your life. The same suppressed hurt keeps getting triggered.
It's the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt that sabotages our lives. Finding and healing this hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do.
Bill Ferguson....Masteryoflife.com
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Easy Does it..Keep It Simple..Let Go and Let God..
eeeeek! my nemisis......the control freak here, when i get upset, it is becuz the "learned helplessness" kicks in...and than i get fearful, than frustrated/ angry...
WOW!!! i really needed to read this phil.....today, i banged my knee in my truck.....spilled a HALFgallon of my juice in my truck.....than dropped a big bottle on my toe.....but i STOPPED.....BREATHED.....ASKED my hp "what IS it u r telling me????"
i think it was to SLOW down.....keep my MIND on the present what i am doing.....HOLD me inthe now....i have to force myself to do this....to HOLD me in the now.....than my UPSETS will lessen to be sure......i needed to see this , phil, thanks and BIG hugs, rosie
Some of these things are okay up to a point. I agree with some of this, about how we respond to something comes from the inside. But I am not sure that it is that it reminds us always of the past.... past habitual patterns of relating to things... but,,, if I slam my finger in the car door I don't yell "Ouch!" and jump around cuz it reminds me of the past. Some things are just plain terrible, in the present, and it takes some effort to stay on top of it.
love in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
Hi Amanda....Yes...I agree...There are some things..that I do question..in some of these posts..
Appreciate your feedback..
I look at this one and Im thinking of the fingers in the car door thing...
If I did that today...and had a whole lot of negative stuff..still buried inside..including resentment and anger...
It would likely push a trigger, and surface in one big blob..and my reactions would be to kick the car door..till it fell off..then take the gas can out of the trunk...and light a match to the whole car.:)
If that negative stuff isnt there..I would likely swear a wee bit...jump up and down and yell "Ouch.Ouch.Ouch..and in a few minutes the injury would subside..
Just my take on it...and not judging yours in any way...
Its great to get everyones perspective on some of these things..make me think..anyway..
You have a good night...
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Easy Does it..Keep It Simple..Let Go and Let God..
"We are never upset for the reasons we think are" but if I lift my head and bang it really hard on an open cabinet door in my kitchen, Then "I am upset for the reason I think I am" My head hurts, a lot.
