Understanding what it is necessarily means making our way through the jungle of our assumptions, predispositions, biases, feelings, facts, conjecture and the like. It can assist you in getting out of your “rut”. Plus, how else can you discern “what is” unless you can acknowledge what may be your internal world of make believe. That is, we make things up or filter criteria through our personal perception which for most is highly tainted by our own pain and experience. Here are some applications that may help you distinguish your perceptions about an event from the event itself.
“Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda.” Have you ever said, “That should not be that way. That is wrong. If I were in charge I would have…” “Someone could have done something about this.” I think we have all had these thoughts. However, they take away your power to deal effectively with a given event. The outrage over a mishandled life situation can blind us to seeing “where do we go from here.” It can pull us away from the total context of a situation causing us to ineffectively look for solutions. Or, it may limit the possible solutions we are capable of seeing. I teach a life coaching tool that allows an individual to pull themselves out of a life event and get neutral about their own circumstances. It is the most powerful of places from which to make decisions and apply wisdom to your life.
“No Back Doors.” Sometimes the capacity to stay present or live in the now without resistance is very challenging. This is often because we do not want to let ourselves fully acknowledge the emotional pain we are experiencing. When we feel this intense hurt we frequently begin to look for back doors so that we may escape. However, the more we can accept what is and let the emotion run its course the more we will be able to handle intensity going forward. Perhaps a good example of this would be with children. We do not want any harm to come to them but as a parent we let them experience the world so that they can grow up.
If you are experiencing severe emotional pain, then get help from an appropriate professional. We all need others to help us make it through life and it sure is sweeter when we have friends and support along the way.
“Here Comes the Judge” We live in a world that typically judges everything as right or wrong, good or bad and evil or righteous. We need to respect and live by our personal values. However, we are a fanatical, ongoing, everything gets judged society. I would suggest to you that some things just are, hence, the title of this blog. They are not good or bad they just exist. I ask some of my clients to pretend they can pick up “right & wrong” and set it off to the side so that everything we discuss does not get filtered through this lens. We keep it close so they can always get their hands on it if they need to do so. But, typically this is a very freeing experience. You just don’t have to judge everything.