AGGRESSIVELY ENGAGING IN THE BELIEFS PROCESSES
AND GOING TO COMPLETION
THERE IS SO MUCH TO THIS
The impetus to restart the process of altering your beliefs were the bad consequences of getting caught up in rage. The process to unravel that is not simple, as there is no quick solution (except to decide to stop it before it goes any further) as it is supported by a number of beliefs.
Initial understanding can be achieved to some extent by reading the pieces on rage and anger, as part of your initial learning. But stopping at reading or "insights" or tips or slogans will leave you with no completion - only dilettantism - and notice how that doesn't work, no matter how much information is gathered. If we gather information, including insights from advisors and gurus, we end up with just information. Information is necessary but not sufficient - and information gathering without full harvesting is mostly a huge misuse of time and energy, with alot of waste in the process.
Without Mastery Learning (which you need to begin doing) plus reexamining of beliefs to completion, we are left with great learning gaps, which then beget having a series of misunderstandings (in this case in the form of dysfunctional beliefs) which support each other in a kind of perverted logical way. The unraveling may require one going back to learning the basics from an "earlier grade" (in the school of life) so that you can understand the higher learning concepts.
As suggested in the process recommended at the end of this piece, if you are seriously committed to getting the results you want, you may have to go back to the pre-requisites (linked from the Program's page). Such misunderstandings or missings earlier on may leave one filling the gaps, so that one does note understand how the brain operates, so one is left believing in metaphors as if they are reality, such as inner child or there being some authoritative entity within (see The Believing Brain, which is an essential understanding), which in turn makes it harder to believe information that pops into one's brain.
A core understanding that could be the key to letting go of this is illustrated in the movie A Beautiful Mind, but if you're too busy doing other things to watch the movie, then you'll continue the "believing" behavior - and it will sabotage the process to correct those beliefs. (If you watch that movie, give yourself 5 pts. on the scorecard for the process at the end of this piece.)
You need to realize, and do what it takes to let go of this, that you are operating from a fixed (largely closed to new information of certain types) mindset instead of a growth mindset (which is alot easier - and much more productive). Read "Fixed" Entity Versus The Growth Mindset.
As is suggested below, it is essential to put in more rigor, enough to complete the process to get the results you want, without continuing to "stop short".
COMPLETION TO "SUFFICIENT KNOWING"
The key for this endeavor is to do completion and not to quit before the objective is attained. The key is to reach, and understand, Sufficient Knowing and not to stop short of that.
If you commit to do at least 100 hours on this project, I will commit to giving you feedback on the work that you do in writing. Although you probably get some "insights" and/or relief from talking it out, that process does not seem to get the desired results. Therefore, the time might be better spent doing writing and exercises.
It seems logical to me that something cannot be corrected or solved without going "through" something - completely "through" it. That means identifying all the specifics and following through on the thought process to the "conclusion" or consequence. In stating a belief this means you need to identify (or even make up) what this means to you in terms of the impact on you, not leaving it unfinished or vague. (False threats, or "the feeling of there being a threat", exist in vague, unthought-through non-thinking. The threat can disappear or at least significantly weaken when we actually identify the entire conversation and are specific.)
For instance, if someone does not think you are worthy, your end statement might be "and that means to my primitive brain-think that I will not survive" and "that means I must battle the source of the survival threat" [which is not real, at all] and "I identify the person not giving me worth as the person to attack" and "that will solve the danger" [which is also untrue]. And those statements give you something to work with and to correct to fit reality. Without addressing all that, it is all just like an incomplete sentence (or an incomplete statement) that cannot possibly be detailed enough to convey the full message.
After you write out all you can on an incident, you would do your correction and reflection process from the viewpoint and advice of your alter ego "The Scientist". Then, after you have written all you can, send me a copy, so that I can add my comments and suggestions. (If you like the idea of The Improvement Journal, you might use it fully by writing about observations of things you'd like to 'duplicate' in your behaviors and/or life.) It may be necessary to clear up a big area of misunderstanding, upon which you may be basing a conclusion. So I will offer suggested readings, for the correction of a misbelief cannot be done without sufficient knowing.
I would suggest, in order to have more of a sense of progress, that you run on parallel tracks, where you are engaged in doing the writing and thinking on specific beliefs and things that come up WHILE you are also reading to learn, via the program.
K
SORRY, THERE IS NO VALID EXCUSE
Incidentally, there is no valid excuse for not succeeding at this. All you have to do is stick with it and not stop short of getting the result. If you possibly can, I would like you to commit to never mentioning again in our conversations your frequently repeated story of why you got this way - it is a disempowering story, attributing all the power to the past and to your poor guides...
"But someone who has 8 different negative factors might mean they can't be fixed. And that's me. W. Mitchell only had two big things happen, so that might be why he is ok."
Hopefully, you scientific mind will not allow you to believe such utter, incredible nonsense!!!!!!!
NOT BEING DEPENDENT IN THE PROCESS
If one does not "co-operate" with his support persons, one will not make as much progress - probably alot less. If two or more people "operate" together toward a common goal, effectiveness can skyrocket.
However, if the support person ends up doing most of the work and the thinking, simply because he can do it better, then effectiveness plummets (and the support person is misused, which takes away energy from what he could contribute if we are only using his unique capabilities).
You have stated that you do so much better when you're not dependent (which you call "giving away your power" [no kidding!]. One cannot develop one's power without trying things out, and learning from them - as one will be waiting forever for "the rescue", while lying there figuratively in passiveness and ultimately resentment of how others don't do what you want. It doesn't work!
What this means is that you are the one who needs to push and put the energy into the process to make it work. Where something is missing, you figure out how to find it. You persist - until you get the result! Or the alternative is to "give up" because other people are simply letting you down, and the result will be that everyone has failed you and no one has measured up with sufficient knowledge or the "right approach". Of course, one of the problems that occurs with people who think this way is that they don't go far enough to see the parts that do work - and if one thing doesn't work then they think the program is not so good, whereas they actually should take what works and then find what is necessary to supplement it. Otherwise, the person has unrealistic expectations for others to be "super-people" - who don't really exist except in the imagination of a child, who wishes it were so.
The bottomline is: If you want to be strong (not give away your power), you must work your power muscle - and you can't do that if you are depending on other people to lift the weights for you!!!
SUFFERING IS NOT FROM LIFE!
The suffering is not from "life" or "out there" - those aren't bad - in fact, they are quite good. The suffering is all in the "made up" world, all are simply "mental constructs" existing only in the mind, not inherently but from our having created them. You need to know this in reviewing your beliefs, so that you can see that they are complete nonsense, with the only reality being that you actually do create suffering from them - but totally unnecessary suffering that serves no purpose (recall that the mind gives you uncomfortable jolts to incentivize you to get your survivableness back up to par to protect you - those "uncomfortable" jolts are what we construe as "suffering"). But when the threats aren't at all real...
COMPLEXITY TAKES TIME AND WORK
Please realize that beliefs are held in an intertwined complexity, where each depends on and relates to other beliefs. These beliefs are simply indiscriminately coughed up by the primitive brain as a match for the current situation, so you must do something to manage them or they will be overwhelming.
This was not a problem so much in the caveman days, as they didn't tend to "make up" alot of nonsensical, nonreality beliefs, but we current time residents of this world do. The reason people fail to address these beliefs successfully is that they stop too early, thinking that somehow a few general suggestions will solve the problem.
However, there is no shortcut. The interlocking beliefs must be separately dealt with one at a time, so that a false belief that supports another false belief is removed (pulling the rug out from the other). At first, it looks like "no progress" as one's new affirmations seem not to work, with the old supporting belief still in effect.
But the interesting part, once we've reached 'critical mass' or sufficient momentum to get through the heart of things, is that all of a sudden a bunch of derivative and/or falsely supported beliefs just seem to disappear automatically and without extra effort. But that point is probably about 100 focused hours into the clean up process. However, new progressive beliefs entering into a situation, even when not fully installed or even fully believed, tend to crowd out the negative ones - so that you experience benefits as you go. As you go over the top of the hill, you'll coast into new freebies and a much, much better experience of life. [You may still be a doofus in the eyes of others, but you'll be a happy one, seeing that their misconceptions are just part of the bullbleep of society.]
GIVING UP TELLING YOUR STORY FOR AT LEAST 90 DAYS
As part of the program, we need to free up resources and get rid of that which displaces progress. This means that you would best make a pledge for the next 90 days to not repeat your story of why you are the way you are and the alternative version of it about how therefore you can't (or might not, because you are "different") change. In our conversations, not as criticism but as feedback, you tell your story over and over and over and over and over and over... However, I think I "got it" after the first 5 repeats.
If you insist on not giving up your stories, the odds of success will drop substantially.
NO RESULTS = INSUFFICIENT KNOWING
If you don't have the results you want in life (the ones that are under your control, that is), you, obviously, must lack the knowledge necessary to be able to skillfully get those results.
The solution is to pay attention to this indicator and go get the knowledge. Go back and fill in what is missing! Until you get the desired results - which is to be free of reactionary impulses that cause you to express rage/anger and to be unhappy about your behavior. The thing that takes the time is to get rid of many of the false beliefs that support the nonsensical reaction in the first place.
