TheForceOfDao

Tag: PersonalDevelopment

  • “They Pushed Me Away”, and Other Disturbing Beliefs.

    “They Pushed Me Away”, and Other Disturbing Beliefs.

    When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true. – Byron Katie

    You’ve just had an argument with a loved one. They’ve said or done something that you vehemently believe pushed you away. You feel so upset that they would hurt you like that. Why won’t they let you close?

    Perhaps this sounds familiar.

    You’ll hear people advise others on hearing such a story, that he/she “pushed you away”, and you believe it. You feel powerless. How are you ever going to reach them? It feels like a gulf between you two.

    But!

    Have you ever considered that this interpretation is a complete fabrication? That you’ve simply believed this judgement only because others have told you that is what’s happening without ever having questioned it for yourself. What does it even mean when someone pushes you away – is it even possible?

    So for just for a moment let’s consider another possibility. Perhaps there’s another perspective, an opposite to the original belief.

    If you find this resonates with you, I encourage you to follow along with your own scenario where you believed this thought and see what arises for you through gentle inquiry.

    How do you react?

    What happens when you believe the thought, “they pushed me away”?

    If I put myself in the shoes of someone who believes the thought, I would see the other as the “problem”. I believe they are rejecting me, and it feels so painful. They are the one making it difficult to connect. I’m wanting them to be different from what they are, and my thoughts take on a need to change them in order for me to feel connected to them. I criticise their faults in my mind and use that as ammo to prove the belief is true.

    I pull away from them, making myself the victim. I don’t want to express my own vulnerabilities around a person that’s hostile. Comparisons arise in the mind where “I” am better than “them” because they are the aggressor, and I’m the victim. I don’t see my own role in the exchange.

    I feel anxiety in my chest, a constriction in breathing, and the fear of not being close to this person.

    Who would you be without the thought?

    This is an invitation to see who you would be in the same situation without the thought. What might you say or do that is different? This is not intended as an intellectual exercise to change how you behave next time, only simple inquiry.

    Without the thought, I would see someone who is unable to express their emotional state with clarity in that moment. I feel compassion towards them, which immediately brings me closer. I’m aware I’m not actually too sure what it is they’re going through, so I notice curiosity arising in me. Rather than assuming I know what’s going on, I question what’s happening. I feel it’s possible to ask whether I’ve understood them correctly but sharing what I understood them to say. I don’t feel so threatened by their words and behaviour, I can feel more space in my own mind to hold what’s going on for us both. It feels more peaceful this way.

    Rather than rejected, I feel connected.

    Turnarounds

    The turnarounds are a way of exploring whether the opposite is as true as, or truer than the original statement. It is not intended to disqualify the original statement, simply an invitation to try on a different pair of shoes and to see if there’s any truth in it. Such an inquiry can provide profound insights into how beliefs shape our entire world view.

    “They didn’t push me away”

    I might have interpreted it that way, but I can not know what is going on in their mind. It’s a form of violence to infer intention onto their behaviour. If anything, it causes them to push back.

    It is actually impossible for another person to push me away, only I can believe that onto their behaviour. It is a choice from my side to “be pushed away.”

    It could be that they are hurting and don’t have the emotional intelligence and capacity to express themselves clearly in that moment. What’s more likely is that their behaviour is a cry for connection and love but unable to express it.

    “I pushed me away”

    I pushed myself away by believing my own thoughts around the intention of their behaviour. I hurt myself in the process and ended up feeling rejected.

    I created distance between myself and the other by interpreting them as the aggressor. I closed down my heart and put up defences to protect myself against the perceived threat.

    All of this takes me away from the present and from the inherent goodness that resides within.

    In a way, I pushed myself away from what felt good internally by the beliefs I held in that moment.

    “I pushed them away”

    It is useful to reflect upon our own behaviour in the scenario, not as a way to become self-critical and self-flagellating but as a way of waking up to our own reactions.

    It could be that in that situation, I push them away by judging their behaviour as hostile and confrontational, inferring intention onto them, thereby creating distance between us.

    My mind may run off into the past, recalling similar situations and projecting into the future that this is how this person is, and will always be. I make them solid and unchangeable.

    When I’m in my mind I am not present with the person before me and I stop listening to what it is they’re trying to communicate to me – I am caught in the stories in my mind.

    I might notice that I am hostile in my own way by no longer engaging with them from a place of care and understanding.

    I check out, deciding that as far as I’m concerned, the conversation is over. That makes it very hard for them to re-connect.

    There’s another turnaround that I will leave for you to investigate, “they didn’t push me away”. How might that be true in that situation? Please leave a comment down below on any interesting insights you’ve had as you followed along.

    …

    The truth is that we all want to feel heard and understood by others, especially loved ones. Sometimes, without realising it, disconnection arises when we infer meaning onto a person/event that is otherwise meaningless. By learning how to inquire into stressful beliefs, one can become more aware of how these beliefs stop us from being present and seeing life with clarity.

    We begin to awake to the dream.

    If you’re enjoying what you’ve read of this series so far, let me know in the comments what common expression or judgement you’d like me to question next.

    Thanks for reading!

  • Rediscovering Identity: A Journey Beyond Doing

    I am not what I’m thinking, I am who I’m being. A human being, not a human doing.

    It is coming up to 6 months now since I left England to spend time with my mum in Thailand.  I had felt increasingly that I was becoming more and more disconnected from myself as I buried myself deeper and deeper into doing more and more, feeling that I was trapped on a fast paced treadmill taking me further away from knowing who I am.

    I had decided several months before my departure date that I would leave and worked and saved hard to allow myself enough financial reserves to take an extended time out from working.  My aim was to join my mum in a peaceful area of Northern Thailand and reconnect with myself to figure out who is Emily.

    My decision was not precipitated by any calamitous event, if anything, looking through the eyes of traditional “success” I was well on my way.  I had a loving partner, I was spearheading my own project at work and was slowly but surely growing my private Personal Training business. Yet there was a continuous nagging feeling that this wasn’t the right path for me.  Despite these “advances”, I was feeling more than ever that  I could not decipher who I was as a person.  My days endlessly looped around hours of work, training, binge watching Netflix and gardening; my mind constantly chattering about how to “improve” my situation amid feeling a deep sense of lack.  I found my mindset hardening as I increasingly used logic to solve my way out of my situations (useful when dealing with logical situations such as how to get my bike started when the battery is flat, not often the case when trying to navigate the vagaries of life).  In addition to this I was dogged by dreams of sitting at airports waiting for a flight to take me away.  Plagued by doubt as to whether I should listen to my dreams and whether leaving was the right thing to do, I spontaneously purchased a plane ticket to Thailand. Sharing the news with Kelly was difficult, a communications event I messed up, and yet she only became my strongest supporter as I prepared my departure.

    With hindsight, my departure from the UK coincidentally coincided with the rise of Covid-19 and had I left it any longer, I would have missed the opportunity of being here.  My focus when I first arrived out here involved having a routine of physical activity, massages to eliminate excess tension in my body and to help heal a motorbiking accident, a strict eating regime (no grains or coffee!) and to figure myself out, all at once.  I was still carrying the adrenaline charged, iron-fisted, dopamine-addicted tendencies from my recent lifestyle and I did battle with the new influences of meditation and Buddhist and Taoist teachings that my mum brought to the table.  There was conflict not only externally but internally too and on any given day it would either be the routinely physical mindset dominating or the mindless meditation attempting to push the reset button.  Over time though I felt myself dropping more of the ideas and beliefs I had about myself and a small glimmer of who Emily is has started shinning through.

    I was not my likes or dislikes, I was not my jobs (past, present or future), I was not my fashion sense, my genetic inheritance, my failures or triumphs, I was not my thoughts, I was not my emotions.  Instead what I realised was that I am responsible for dropping all these notions of who I think I am and instead need to learn to live at one with nature and humanity in a way that promotes sustainability and yes, love.