Day 168: I Hope Things Get Better - Part 1

I often go into Hope when I experience being overwhelmed with the negative events in my life where I Hope that ‘things will get better’. When I am Hoping, I am not the directive principle and instead I’m waiting for something positive to happen – I deliberately attempt to ignore the overwhelming negative events, tell myself that ‘there’s nothing I can do to change it at this moment’, distract myself with other tasks, and forget about the problem for a little while before the thoughts, fears, and emotions that I have attached to the negative events reemerge. On occasions something ‘happens’ to improve my situation where my life looks quite miraculous because I haven’t actually moved myself to assist with this improvement - It’s these miraculous and positive experiences with events in my life ‘suddenly getting better’ that I have used to keep myself locked into Hope, to not take responsibility for my living, and to not do the make decisions, do the work, and make the changes required for my situation to improve. I realize that I can no longer Hope that my situation and the events in my reality will change for the better and that what is actually required is for me to make decisions and move myself within these decisions for anything with in my reality, including myself, to in-fact change.

SELF-FORGIVENESS

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into Hope when and as I experience being overwhelmed with what I see as negative events in my reality. Instead of standing up, taking responsibility for myself and my reality, and moving myself to make decisions and changes, I attempt to ignore the situations and distract myself with other tasks and entertainment while I hope and wait for the situations in my reality to ‘work themselves out’ positively.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not be the direct guiding principle of myself where instead of going into solutions, I overwhelm myself with problems until I separate and abdicate myself from the problems by saying, “there’s nothing I can do to change this at the moment,” and then give myself over to Hope where I wait for a positive change to happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deliberately attempt to ignore problems and/or overwhelming events, distract myself with other tasks, and ‘forget’ about the problem until the thoughts, fears, and emotions that I have attached to the negative events reemerge. I have convinced myself that ‘things will work out on their own if I leave them alone’, in-spite of the fact that I see that things just don’t ‘work out on their own’ and that problems require for someone or something to actually physically move and/or be a force for problems to work out. I do not allow myself to be that movement and force and I instead allow others to do this for me because I believe myself to be limited with what I can do and that things will work out better if someone/something more capable than me handles the problem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not move myself to assist and support myself to make changes, improvements, and/or preventative actions within my reality because, on occasion, I experience my life ‘suddenly getting better’ with no action, change, nor movement on my part – and I like this and experience a positive energetic feeling of a miracle, a blessing, Good Karma, and/or that someone/something ‘out there’ separate from me with Universe Powers must Love me. I hold onto these moments and Hope that they will continue to play-out so that I do not have to apply myself, take responsibility for my living, make decisions, nor make the changes required for my living situation to improve. Here, I have locked myself into Hope and become possessed with/by Hope and within this, I have limited myself from realizing my potential – all because I fear losing this glimmer of a potential positive experience.

Day 167: Be Brutally Honest With Me - Part 2

Here continuing with Self-Correction and Self-Commitment from Day 166: Be Brutally Honest With Me - Part 1.

SELF-CORRECTION AND SELF-COMMITMENT STATEMENTS

When and as I see that I am about to enter into an agreement to be brutally honest with another, I stop and breathe. I realize that honesty does not equal stability nor does it assist and support others with awareness, understanding, and working on solutions – especially when approaching the ‘honest information’ from a point of reaction. So, how I share honesty with others when working through a problem is no different from how I would approach honesty with myself when working on a problem where I clear myself of reactions so that I can look at the problem realistically and construct practical, trustworthy solutions.

I commit myself to stopping automatically responding to others requests for brutal honesty by breathing, slowing myself down, and allowing myself to take a moment to look at the known and/or potential outcomes to see if it’s best for myself and others for me to respond or if it’s best for me assist and direct the situation to understanding, awareness, clarity, and stability.

When and as I see that I am quickly going into an assumption about how an event is going to play out positively if/when/as I am honest, I stop and breathe. I realize that I have not allowed myself to slow down and look at events/scenarios/situations – I go right into my mind and speed ahead to the part where everything almost always works out for the best. 

I commit myself to put a guard on my mouth, to stop going over the information within/as situations, scenarios, and events quickly and to take the time to sort through what’s going on with breathing, slowing myself down, looking at events/situations/scenarios practically, asking questions, and sharing perspectives on what’s going on as well as potential solutions that I see.

When and as I see that I am experiencing shock because something happening in the external world is not working and/or not in alignment with my beliefs that I have stored within and as me as information, I stop and breathe. I realize that I am showing myself that my belief is not real. Instead of going into my mind to distract myself with figuring out what went wrong, I direct myself to the physical act of writing out the beliefs, the consequences of my beliefs, self-forgiveness for my beliefs, and self-correction so that I do not continue with the pattern. 

I commit myself to stopping myself from going into a shocked experience by STOPPING, breathing, stopping myself from going into my mind to figure out what happened, and directing myself to the physical act of writing it out, applying self-forgiveness, and self-correcting myself. I commit myself to embrace these moments of my beliefs getting blown apart, face myself, and then realign myself with what is best.

When and as I see that I am attempting to go into my positive beliefs about Honesty as indicated by me looking to get a positive energetic experience of Hope, I stop and breathe. I realize that my beliefs about honesty are lies – they are bullshit stories and phrases that I have told myself in an attempt to get out of facing the physical consequences of things I’ve done and/or participated in that I’m having a negative emotional reaction to. I realize that I’ve automated this at this point – that I will have the negative experience and then immediately seek out the positive – and it’s easier – it’s quicker and easier to forget than actually taking the time to balance self-honesty with self-responsibility and being an active participant in my self-change.

I commit myself to stop going into my positive beliefs about Honesty and within this stop going for the positive energetic Hope experience as a way to feel better about my negative emotional reaction to something I have done and/or participated in. Instead of going into the belief, I breathe, slow myself down and back myself to my negative emotional experience and investigate why I went into it in the first place – I ask myself questions: Why am I trying to forget about this? Why am I trying to take the easy way out of this? What can I do to actually change this so that I can live in a self-honest, responsible way and not keep creating this sort of consequence for myself? Here, also, I commit myself to writing these points out on paper/screen so I have them in front of me and can work with them in physical reality rather than in my mind where things get foggy or are easily forgotten with distraction.

When and as I see that I am about to automatically go into my mind-purge ‘honesty’ that I have justified and excused with my belief system about honesty, I stop and breathe. I do not go there. I realize that no good will come of this and that the clean-up will be extensive and that some of the damage may be irreparable. This is not something that I want for myself and others.

I commit myself to STOP automatically going into a mind-purge when and as I am asked for honesty. I put a guard over mouth, I breathe, and make certain that I am clear before I speak. When and as I am clear, I direct the question/request of Honesty to a solution focused discussion where I ask questions, investigate what’s going on, share perspectives and suggest solutions.

Here continuing with Self-Correction and Self-Commitment from writing and Self-Forgiveness on - See more at: http://self-commitment-of-carrie.blogspot.com/#sthash.pkfLxejh.dpufH

Day 166: Be Brutally Honest With Me - Part 1

"CONSUMED By The Idea of Yourself" - Charcoal and Chalk Pastel on Paper, 11x14inch, by Andrew Gable

Recently, a friend asked me to be ‘more honest’ with them than I’d ‘ever been before’ regarding my recollection of details of a past event that they were sorting through. I agreed to this and gave my friend all of the information that I could remember in relation to the event. I assumed that the truth would assist my friend to sort out, understand, and work on solutions for problems that emerged from the past event – this was not the case though. My friend, instead became depressed, would not talk with me the next day, became angry with me, and ultimately decided to end the friendship. I experienced shock for several days because it did not go the way I thought it would go because in mind, I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that honesty brings people closer together, that honesty is the best policy, and that good people are honest and speak the truth no matter what the consequences are because honest truth will save you … it will set you free. So, here again, I automatically act on the belief system that I have integrated into and as me. Someone asks for honesty, I answer them honestly. I do not question it – I just go right into it! And I do this again and again and again even though my being honest NEVER produces the positive result that I imagine.

SELF-FORGIVENESS

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to agree to be brutally honest with a friend when I was aware that their mental state was unstable as indicated by their emotional, pleading, and desperate tone of voice and expression with words that indicated depression on the phone. I believed that if I gave my friend what they were asking for – a brutally honest account of events and personal experiences – that this would assist them to stabilize. Instead of actually assisting and supporting my friend by asking questions, hearing them, allowing myself to fully understand the situation, directing the points to discussion and within this, getting them to a place where they are clear and stable, I automatically responded to a friend’s request without considering how the outcome of my brutal honesty would actually result.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assume that the honest truth would assist a friend to sort out, understand, and work on solution or problems – in my mind I saw us looking at the information in a practical way, sorting through it together, getting to really understanding why this particular event occurred in the first place, and share perspectives on possible solutions. Because I was running the scenario quickly through my mind and seeing only how everything would work out and be a ‘bonding experience’, I did not consider the reality of a friend in that moment who required my attention, assistance, and support with hearing, understanding, and directing from a point of what’s best for the friend rather than what I show myself is going to work out for ME in my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience shock because a situation that I had worked out in my mind according to my beliefs about honesty, does not actually work in physical reality. Instead of seeing what I do, seeing the consequences, writing out my beliefs that I participate in, and self-correcting myself, I go into my mind to try to figure out ‘what am I doing or did wrong’ and ‘why am I not good enough’ as this distracts me from me showing myself that my beliefs are not real at all - my beliefs are blown to pieces in one moment – and I do not want to face the fact that what I believe about honesty is a lie.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that honesty brings people closer together, that honesty is the best policy, that good people are honest, and that good people speak the truth no matter what the consequences are because the God’s Honest Truth will save you and set you free. Regardless of the fact that I see over and over and over again that honesty and being honest is/does none of these things, I believe it – I want to believe it. I want to believe it because I experience a positive feeling of hope for myself and my fellow human beings. I want to give honesty this power and authority because if I do and if it works out then we’re all okay! I mean, that’s the agreement right? If we’re honest then there won’t be so many consequences if any at all. WRONG. And if I had allowed myself to see, remember, and be aware instead of keeping myself in this belief bubble about honesty, I would have seen that these beliefs about honesty are some of the biggest lies I’ve told myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to automatically act on the belief system that I have connected to Honesty – I do not slow down and go through the steps of asking myself questions nor do I direct myself in the best way – nope, I just go for it! If someone outside of me asks me for honesty, I tell them as much detail as I can remember which is often broken up so I go backwards and forwards on the timeline of events – which, as I look at it here is more like messy mind purging and less like clear communication of events. So, I do this mind-purge in addition to not directing a discussion to investigating and practicality – and I’ve never allowed myself to look at my behavior and changed it, no, I expect the person whom I’m in communication with to ‘take it as it is’ and ‘deal with it’. And meanwhile, my body is buzzing, I’m shaking, my chest is tight and my solar-plexus is in knots with fears and reactions because I’m not taking responsibility for myself, not respecting myself, and not being honest with myself.

Day 165: Trust - A Romantic-Mind-Fantasy - Part 2

Here continuing with Self-Correction and Self-Commitment from writing and Self-Forgiveness on Day 164: Trust - A Romantic-Mind-Fantasy - Part 1.

SELF-CORRECTION AND SELF-COMMITMENT STATEMENTS

When and as I see that I am and/or attempting to place my trust in others as per my romantic ideas, thoughts, imaginations in relation to Trust, I stop and breathe.  I realize that I am forcing and/or attempting to force myself as my mind onto others as a way to try to manipulate, control, and influence others to act in a way that benefits me as a mind and gives my mind ‘life’ and makes my imaginations, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and definitions real.  Additionally, I realize that, with my imagination I construct, accept, and allow what works best for me and me alone, so to continue to accept and allow myself to manipulate and control others with Trust is selfish, one-dimensional, and does not align with my decision to expand my awareness and actually care for the beings outside of myself.

I commit myself to stopping placing my trust in others by reminding myself of the nature/starting-point of myself within and as my desire to place my trust in others in the first place which is for my benefit only – as a being and as a mind – to manipulate and control others so that I do not have to change.  Instead, I direct myself to change, to be the change, and to actually allow myself to care for others with the decision, into a moment of breath, to not knowingly manipulate and attempt to control others.

When and as I see that I am attempting to make myself believe that I can trust others to do ‘what’s right’ or ‘what is best’, I stop and breathe.  I realize that this belief is SO not realistic and all deception – I mean, if it was aligned with me as equality and oneness, as who I am at a beingness-level,  and what’s actually best, I wouldn't have tried over-and-over-and-over again to make myself believe that Trust, as per my romantic-imagination-mind definitions, is real.

I commit myself to stop attempting to make myself believe that I can trust others to ‘do what’s right’ or ‘do what’s best’ by no longer accepting and allowing myself to go into the deception and self-separation – and, instead, allow my awareness to expand to see the world and all of us beings within/on/as it and acting for/in/as a way that is best for us all as a group – this is real trust.

When and as I see that I am living or attempting to live by my self-interested definition of ‘what is best for all’ as ‘what is best for ME’ by intentionally directing a situation in a way that avoids conflict, emotional turmoil, someone taking something personal, and/or any negative outcome so that I am not ‘inconvenienced’, I stop and breathe.  I realize that this is for my own benefit and does not assist and support myself and/or others to expand situations/events/problems with understanding and coming to solutions, as inter-personally and as a group, that are agreed are best and workable for all.

I commit myself to no longer live out a self-interested definition of ‘what is best for all’ and instead live ‘what’s best for all’ as directing myself and myself within potential conflict situations with assisting and supporting myself and others to investigate the problem, placing solutions that are worthwhile and/or equally beneficial to everyone, and living/walking/being the solution.

When and as I see that I am attempting to make others happy and/or make it possible for others to have a positive experience with me as to build Trust, I stop and breathe.  First, I realize that I am attempting to manipulate others into a Trust relationship with me and second, I realize that it’s not practical, realistic, nor possible to make anyone outside of myself do/feel/think/be any way that is not their decisions to do/feel/think/be. 

I commit myself to stop attempting to make others happy and/or try to create positive experiences for people for my own benefit.  I remind myself that happiness and positive experiences are energetic reactions, energy never lasts and so the happiness and positive feelings do not last – it is not real.  It is actually physically impossible to make another and/or be a catalyst of others happiness and positivity for the long-term.  So, instead of using my time to manifest Trust from manipulation, deception, and physical impossibilities, I commit myself to work on changing my self-communication and interpersonal communication from self-interest for positive energy to awareness, understanding, clarity, and specificity.

When and as I see myself going into the negative polarity of giving up on others, wiping my hands clean of others, abdicating my responsibility for others, and not allowing myself to be/become aware of the possible consequential outcomes of my actions and words within and as interpersonal communication, I stop and breathe.  I realize that I am acting/speaking as if I have free will and/or a choice to walk away from the messes I leave behind with the assumption/expectation that others are responsible to sort through the mess and clean it up for themselves – when the reality is that it’s not best if I walk away and do not take responsibility for others because of the mess, as consequence and as the things I ‘try to forget’, will keep building and building and growing and growing until the stuff is so deep that I have to face it.

I commit myself to take responsibility for my words and actions by allowing myself to be aware of the potential consequential outflows and by working on directing myself accordingly as what’s best for all – within this I will be taking responsibility for others by not creating a platform for others to accumulate unnecessary consequence for themselves. It’s a win-win – the less consequence I create for myself, the less mistakes I have to go back and fix, and the more this frees all of us up to work on what’s immediately here rather than adding more on to what we already are required to do.

When and as I see that I am wanting and/or desiring to place myself as my Trust in the hands of another from the starting point of desiring/wanting/needing to prove that my romantic-mind-imagination of Trust is real and to prove that physical reality is not real/wrong, I stop and breathe.  I realize that I am approaching Trust via my mind’s filter where I disregard what I am shown in physical reality and where I do not value myself as Life as indicated by my willingness to give pieces/parts of myself to something else to maintain an imagination and/or illusion.

I commit myself to stop filtering Trust via my romantic-mind-imagination filter and within this commitment I will assist and support myself with my process of stopping myself from separating myself from myself.  When and as the romantic-mind-imaginations of Trust come up, I stop, I breathe, and I do not participate and I do not go there – I commit myself to no longer feed this imagination with energy and allow myself to let go of this imagination and to no longer exist within and as me.

I commit myself to STOP living out my mind-fantasy of Trust which directs me to look for Trust ‘somewhere out-there outside of myself’.  When and as I see that I am going into my mind-fantasy of Trust as indicated by me separating myself from myself with that searching, imagination wandering, and desire to find ‘that perfect person whom I can trust’, I stop, I breathe, and say, “No more.”  Instead of allowing myself to go into my mind in such moments, I allow myself to be here, breathing, slowing myself down, listen to my self-communication, and within this, using my imagination to explore and investigate possible ways that I can direct myself as to prove to myself that I can be trusted with myself and so, slowly and surely develop a relationship with myself built on self-trust.

Day 164: Trust - A Romantic-Mind-Fantasy - Part 1

It Seems So Easy In My Mind
By Andrew Gable

I see that I very much want to place my trust in others because I have a romantic idea of trust where, in my mind, I see the perfect trust as: trusting that others will always do the ‘right’ thing within considering what would have the best outcome for everyone.  Looking deeper, I see that within this ‘best’ or ‘right’ outcome, that the person should/would consider the experiences, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and  reactions of all the individuals that are included-in and/or are effected by what one does as to not create conflict, problems, or ‘hurting another’s feelings’.  I realize that my romantic ideal of Trust is not realistic nor is it practical and I understand that it is impossible to ‘make everyone happy’ in their minds and I have also come to realize that we are responsible for our individual experiences, thoughts, feelings, and reactions – and here, instead of allowing myself to be aware of how my thoughts, words, and actions affect others and directing myself from that awareness, I have gone into the opposite polarity of abdicating my responsibility to others by hoping and attempting to trust that others will take responsibility for their experiences, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and reactions, regardless of what myself and others say and/or do. So, I have used information and knowledge with my romantic idea of Trust and not done anything and still trusting that others will do the ‘right thing’- I see that I have changed the context of my imagination in regards to Trust in my mind rather than investigating Trust and looking at why I attempt to place my trust in others when I have learned in real physical time that to do so ends with self-dishonesty and self-distrust.  It is clear, however, that I am required to stop living out my mind-fantasy of Trust as something that exists separate from me in my external world and use my imagination of Trust as a starting point for self-communication and establishing self-trust that I will direct my words, actions, and thoughts in a way that is best for all.

SELF-FORGIVENESS

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place my trust in others as to act-on and/or act-in-response-to my romantic ideas, thoughts, imaginations, and beliefs in relation to Trust – within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself not to see and realize that forcing myself as my mind onto others is me attempting to manipulate, control and influence others with what I have come to believe is Perfect Trust – a belief and definition that I constructed within/as/from the starting point of how I can benefit in the best way for me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and make myself believe that others will always do the ‘right thing’ or ‘the best thing’, regardless that I observed and experienced over-and-over-and-over-again that others rarely, if ever, do the ‘right thing’ or the ‘best thing’ as per my mind’s judgment of ‘what’s right’ or ‘what is best’ and/or what is actually supportive for all – as an equal opportunity to have a life worth living – in physical reality.  I have not allowed myself to see how messed up my version of Trust is – it’s all about ME, what benefits ME, what’s right for ME, what’s best for ME, ME, ME, ME!!! When all along, Trust has nothing to do with me as an individual personality and everything to do with what is best for each and every one of us as a group living here on Earth.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and live by the principle that ‘what is best’ is to handle, be mindful of, and direct situations where the outcome prevents conflict, emotional turmoil, and/or any negativity on an individualized, personal level.   My starting point here is not from actual caring for someone’s reactions, it’s from my extensive hatred of conflict, emotional outbursts, and blame-projections – to place it simply: It makes me and/or the ‘others I Trust’ look bad if someone has a negative experience as a result of something that me and/or the ‘Person That I Trust’, is perceived as responsible for the negative outcome – and this is inconvenient for me because I do not like ‘looking bad’ OR taking the time to go back, investigate ‘what went wrong’, fix the mistakes myself and others have made, and work out solutions that all are in agreement on.  So here, again, I defined ‘what’s best for all’ as ‘what’s best for ME’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect Trust to ‘making everyone happy’ where if I can do something in such a way that ‘makes everyone happy’ with no negative reactions and/or outflows then I see myself as being seen by others as Trustworthy and someone that others can come to ‘make everything okay’.  Regardless of my awareness that it is not practical, realistic, nor possible to ‘make’ anyone do/feel/think/be any way that I would like, I continue to try.  And within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go to the opposite polarity of giving up on others, wiping my hands clean of others and abdicating my responsibility to others by saying, “I am not responsible for them.  It’s not my fault they are reacting.  It’s their responsibility to direct the points that come up for them,” as if I should be able to do, say, and think as a please and leave the consequential mess for someone else to sort through and clean up. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to question why I place my Trust in others – regardless of the fact that reality has shown me time-and-time-again that me placing my Trust in others ends with me experiencing self-dishonesty and self-distrust, I do not investigate why it’s not working out for me and I do not test out other ways of being.  It’s become automatic where I want to give others my trust to such an extent that it’s a physical expression of handing someone my heart, myself as everything I believe and stand-for, and my life – I want someone to prove that my imagination of Perfect Trust is real and I’m willing to give up pieces of myself as Life as physical substance to get this proof.  Here I have not seen the obvious: that I am filtering this desire/want/need through and as my mind as indicated by my willingness to give up pieces of myself as Life so that I can maintain and hold-onto an illusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live out my mind-fantasy of Trust as something that can be found in the external world that’s separate from me rather than allowing myself to see, explore, learn for myself what Trust really is and how it can be applied in the external world, via my actions and decisions, that are best for all.  If I had not allowed myself to become distracted by trying to find Trust ‘somewhere out there’, I may have seen and realized that I could have just as easily worked on developing Trust within, as, and for myself by allowing myself to listen-to, communicate-with, and build a relationship-with myself.