| John: “Hi, how goes?” |
 |
| Mary: “Good. The weather seems to be nice today.” |
| John: “Yes, it sure is a good day. Did you see the rhododendrons blooming along Salem Road?” |
| Mary: “Yes, they looked really nice, really fresh. … I think it might rain tomorrow.” |
| John: “Really, you think so?” |
| Mary: “I think I heard that on the radio.” |
When I was a teenager, I distinctly remember thinking, “How boring. How boring! How BORING! How could people talk so much about the obvious!? Hello! I mean, yes, ok, the weather is nice, the flowers are blooming, yes, it may rain. Let’s get on with it. Let’s debate something. Let’s agree, let’s disagree, let’s find out why things are happening!” (Yes, I actually probably did think in terms of “Let’s debate something.”)
And now, I have COMPLETELY CHANGED MY MIND. Not even a little bit, not even a tiny bit, but a huge large, definitely, very large, very very large bit.
It has to do with living in the moment. What I once had thought was boring, I now think is so nice. So nice. Some of my favorite times are with friends - after we’ve caught up on this and that and this and that, and we’re just lying on the beach, in all our clothes, on the little washed-up shells, with the sun against our faces (probably commenting about how clear the sky is and how warm the sun feels). Or sitting on the couch in the evening with the music on and just saying how mellow the flutes sound. So simple. So good.
Can you recognize yourself in any of these … ?
* “I’ve never been lucky in (choose one: money, career, love).”
* “Sure, I could have done better if only my parents had….”
* “Well, how am I going to have a healthy outlook after what I’ve been through?”
These things are the blame game. These are examples of blaming as a way of remembering past hurts. And they do hurt. And they are hurts.
And your mind grows addicted to that hurt the more you repeat it and retell that hurt. Your mind starts to look for that hurt in new situations as a way of reinforcing it. It starts to rely on it. And as with anything that becomes uniquely yours, your mind actually redeciphers it to be a good thing. It’s part of a small cognitive dissonance that mind thinks, “Well, I’m a good person, I like myself, so this bad thing has got to just be part of me - what can I do?, it’s just part of me, and I’m a good person.” And then, somehow, without you even being aware, the mind massages the message just a little to be simply, “That pain is part of me.”
The two books mentioned in the previous post overlap on this interesting concept of the person’s ego identifying with the person’s pain.
The Power of Now says that if there is a negative feeling, such as anger, guilt, self-pity, or depression, then that feeling is tied to the body as long as the mind continues to dwell on it and to play out scenarios. In this sense, the author Eckhart Tolle says that the body is connected with the pain in a “pain-body.” Furthermore, Eckhart Tolle describes “ego identification with the pain-body” as that sense that there is something of “my story” or “my life” in that cycle and that there is a pleasure that the body retains from identifying with that pain and that history.
In Get Over Yourself, Tonya Pinkins talks about letting go of the ego, dropping the drama, and getting over the victim and saint self-stories. Both the victim story (”Oh, I can’t do anything right because of all these terrible things that happened to me”, “I have a million perfect reasons to be depressed, and you would be too if you’d been through what I’ve been through”) and the saint story (”I am not going to follow my dream because it might hurt some of my close ones,” “I will switch to my dream job once the kids are in college”) are crutches for not acting now. Both stories tie negative feelings, such as guilt or self-pity to the ego, to the core identity of a person.
Breaking that ego and pain-body identification is, in short, “getting over yourself.”
HOW YOU DO ANYTHING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHING
I read the above quote in this book today. And, having read this phrase, I’m reminded of a line in this book, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. … Always say “yes” to the present moment.”
How you do anything is how you do everything.
What if you decided to start paying deep attention and deep respect to each action you take? What would that feel like? And deep attention and deep respect to each person you interact with - even if it’s the five-second eye contact while crossing the street or a phone call from someone when you’re too busy to relax and give full attention, but what if you did anyway?
Today is today. Today is alive. How you do anything in your life at any point today shows the attitude you have to everything in your life. Respect yourself, your boundaries, your possibilities. How you do anything shows how much you respect yourself.
Take-Away: How you do anything shows your attitude towards doing the other things in your life.
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
~ Margaret Thatcher
Here it is, simple and real:
When you say something good to someone, DO NOT put in anything bad.
That’s it. That simple. When you’re saying good things, keep them good! That’s all. How simple is that?
It frustrates me to no end to hear…
… in the office, “What you did was superb, wonderful, but I just wish you did it all the time.”
…as a couple, “You really matter so much to me, and what you did by coming to my graduation instead of to that conference really matters. I don’t even mind it so much that you’ve missed my last two chamber performances. Thank you.”
…to a friend, “That outfit looks really good on you. And much better than that thing you wore to the charity gala, remember that?”
…with children, “You make me really proud of you. Two A+’s in one week, and a great note from your math teacher! You really should just straighten up in your room a little more.”
There is no high! There is no benefit when you mix the message. What am I saying? That the messenger should be killed? Well, no, ok, I’m not going that far. I’m just pointing out that good combined with bad is semi-good/semi-bad. Here’s the math:
1) good + good + good = good (three pieces of great news or three compliments… together the result is good)
2) bad + bad + bad = bad (three insults…together make a large insult)
3) good + bad = bad (good and bad… together that’s bad)
4) good + good + good + good + good + good + good + bad = bad (n number of good things and one bad thing … together the result is somewhat bad)
Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because the brain remembers bad things more easily than it remembers good things. In the fourth example, the brain overweights the bad. That’s just how brains work. It has to do with being on the lookout for danger in the caveman era. If you don’t see the dangerous animal once, you’re gone. If you don’t always observe the butterflies in the sunshine, you’re still ok, you live. (more…)
