THE REPEATED CONVERSATIONS
IN VARIOUS SETS OF CIRCUMSTANCES

You're Ok.  You just don't "think" so. 

                                                   The BuddhaKahuna
       ______________________________________________________________

For a great number of people, these are conversations essentially repeated over and over again, full of erroneous thinking and false beliefs about and around things going on in your life. 

You MUST correct these and install the corrections, using the worksheets (in this case, you could start with the one that has three columns, simply listing in one column the old belief, then the distortion type, then the new belief that is true and workable).  See the choice in the Beliefs Worksheets Contents/Links section.  If you don't follow up, then you'll keep on getting the same old thing (and if you hope, without doing anything new or different, that you'll somehow get better, then you are engaging in 'insanity', which is basically confused and untested thinking - see High Sanity).


4/14/12

Here are a few triggers and/or circumstances that we typically experience:

HOLDING OTHER PEOPLE AS THE SOURCE OF VALIDATION

“Other people are a source of validation.”
“I decided I was not going to look for a guy for a year. And that I would be with myself, just loving myself.  I am so wanting to love myself.”


THE TRIGGER OF GETTING SUPPORT

What do you tell yourself to get depressed after Truda this last time? 

“It ‘triggers me’ to get support from another .  I become helpless and depressed and just want to be taken care of, be passive.”

      “I don’t even know what the trigger is though.”

       “Every sorrow and hurt for a lifetime comes right out.”

“She has been disappointing as a therapist, supportive but not helpful with tools.

“Sometimes I think she is angry w me and then I turn it around to a ‘fuck you!’


HARD ON MYSELF FOR

“I’m extremely hard on myself for lack of followthrough on so many things.”  [Though, do you notice that you somehow survive even without sufficient follow through?  Therefore, it isn’t essential and is not a fatal flaw, but a survivable thing that humans tend to do.  You cannot escape System One (lower functions, fear mechanism, seeking to protect), so you’ll always be “human”, like the rest of us.  However, System Two can be actively engaged to “work with” System One, with “minimization” and coping statements that are memorized and automatic.  The negative statements are very well memorized and automatic.  The stories of why you are this way are repeated over and over and well memorized and automatic, but always produce a bad feeling – so it might be a good idea to stop repeating, or even speaking again, those stories.  It is strictly a mechanical thing – you say anything like that, you’ll get a bad result and it will be more repeatable, as you groove it further into your brain.  You have to choose to at least never to say it aloud, which is a very doable “stop”. }

“I live in chaos because of filing, and financial issues.”

“So when I fail to followthrough, I think Im fucked up, a loser, that can’t follow through on anything.”
“I compare myself to messed up people and think I am one of them.”
“My mother was so perfect in organization. I compare myself to her.   Finances and money.
How was it they would do this sort of thing [so well]?”


BEHAVIORS COMMON WITH THE PEOPLE AT ALANON

I notice I have behaviors in common with the people at Alanon. 

   - So hard on self
   (I missed writing down the other two you mentioned.)

[Keep going to Alanon or CoDA, every week for at least three months.]


LONELINESS, ISOLATION

“I woke up this morning dreading the prospect of the weekend and being alone.” 

“My 2 friends are not in my life anymore, they have to deal with other issues.”
“I don’t have people in my life – and it works up to insane aloneness.”

Isolation

“I feel so isolated.  Originally excited to be with myself for a year.”   

   “Then isolation hits me – 'not worthy enough' is triggered.”

“What is the point of living without any connection.” 

“I feel ‘hurt.’”

“Knowing someone cares about me is so critical to feeling better about myself – and it’s also like a trap.


SOMEBODY TELLING ME I REPEAT TOO MUCH

Gal at Alanon:  “I closed up tight like a drum when she said ‘you repeat yourself too much.’   She should have known and allowed for that, as people do that when they are upset…” 

“I get people to reject me – and then I shut down.”


WHAT I’LL DO

What I’ll do now is [to take care of myself]:

1.Clean up appt.
2.Exercise – “feel better about self, indicator ‘I’m not helpless and powerless.’
It is helpful when I repeat ‘I have the ability to act.’ I believe that.”
3.Call a few women from group – so communicate
4.Eat well
5.Read inspiring things


WORK WITH VISUALIZATIONS

healthyjourneys.com – doing her visualizations,

“I get in touch w intense amount of sorrow.
Every time I listen I get in touch with
   My heart being broken
   My dreams shattered
   And I fall apart.”

“I need to tell myself that ‘I’m worthy and I can create a worthy life.’”


WHAT I KNOW, FOR SURE

“I’m amazingly capable of turning myself around.” 

-        _____________________________________________________________


RECOMMENDED BY SO MANY, DONE BY SO FEW


Part of the process that is ALWAYS worthy of doing is the simple basic recommended by so many:

‘Never’ letting a negative statement go unanswered.  (In other words, always come back with a “disputing” statement and a positive replacement.   [This is simply System Two (higher brain) answering System One’s nonsense, but honoring its excessively being protective – System Two is there to advise System One, so that System One can have some different programming and also be calmed down somewhat so it won’t repeat that normal crap it spews out normally and inappropriately.]

There is no mysteriousness to this and no magic.  It is simply:


DO THIS PROCESS

1.  Keeping a record for reference when needed (in a file or notebook).
2.  With the sentences (thoughts) of System One written down.  These are normally very rote and not well thought out, but easily repeated.
3.  Then a System Two rational and true statement set up to replace the harmful one.
4.  Then select the top ones to “install” strongly, so that you have an automatic routine that is triggered to offset the bad statements.   Such a routine is known as a “habit”. 

If they are not written down, there is no “stickiness” to the “good” statements.  If you do not review them with another person’s System Two, you’ll not make them better and/or more effective.  And if they are not in writing, then no one can help you.


WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS

The decision is to decide whether you’ll do this.   By doing this, I mean complete it to a very high level, having decided it is worth it.  Of course, to do anything you have to have some faith it’ll work.  All I can say here is that it worked for me and that it has worked for many, many people – and it has been scientifically proven to work, and there are many, many respected thinkers and experts who recommend it.

The reason people don’t think it works is that they fail to understand it or they “have tried it and it didn’t work”, which actually means they didn’t really do the work and probably got distracted onto the next urgent problem.  It is worth completing – and that is the secret to it “working” [‘you working’, that is]. 


THE CENTRAL CONCEPT THAT MUST BE ACCEPTED - OR NO GAME!

If a person fails to see that all events by themselves are neutral, with no meaning, and it is us that adds the meaning.  The process of adding the meaning is simply called “thought” – some sequence of data that is processed in order to get you to do what is needed.  System One simply is putting out a lot of poorly thought out thoughts that are unnecessarily negative, as its real payoff that it evolved for was to have us survive – and it will always err on that side.  It is up to us (System Two) to supervise and see if those statements/thoughts/beliefs are necessarily true and if they are found not to be true, then it is up System Two to correct them with appropriate statements and then to reprogram the System One computer, so that it automatically spews out the “good” statement. 

When people refuse to see this, they get stuck in a fiction:  that circumstances are the direct cause of emotion and behavior.  And, since the circumstances cause those, they are helpless, hopeless victims of whatever occurs in their lives.  Of course, this is not what occurs 100% of the time for people, but how far along on the scale toward never holding oneself as a victim is what determines one’s life, living in “HighSanity” (use search engine). 

If you believe that there is a thought in there and that without thought (data in some form, whether conscious or not) nothing will occur in terms of emotion or behavior, then you can “look” and see (or deduce) what the thought is (or logically might be) and then decide whether to keep that thought operational or to replace it.

It is never true that “’x’ (occurrence/situations)  makes me feel bad/emotion.”   It is always true that ‘x’ occurred and I made up a thought and with that I created the emotion or behavior.  It (‘x’) never does it ‘to’ me.   [And it is always true that if you don’t believe that saying something that is untrue will cause your brain to learn it and repeat it and then you say your story or some untruth, you will live it over and over as your System One brain simply repeats it automatically – it has no capability of discerning the truth.   This is not some mystical thinking.  This is actually mathematically true and just mechanics.  

Do you accept this?
Will you live by this?

If not, then you’ll find System One will not solve it for you and you’ll simple repeat, repeat, repeat – and if it is something you don’t like, it is not a good idea to repeat it.  You can only get out of this circular spiral by intervening somewhere in the process.  You can only change it by inserting a new thought and programming it in.   There is no other way.   This is what works for human beings. 


THERE ARE “CONVERSATIONS” TO WORK ON

“Conversations” are sequences of simple thoughts hooked together in a complex manner to produce meaning or a sequence of meanings.

If the conversation produces a bad result (“feel bad”), then the conversation should be changed. (Duh!)

Since the conversation has many components it cannot be changed instantly, all at once, as some big whole.   It can only be changed by changing the “weak links in the chain”, the components that are contributing to the harm.  

Yes, it is “work” to change each of them, but work with a huge payoff when compared to the damage of repeating a harmful conversation. 

[One thing that seems hard for some people to accept is that any “bad” conversation is based on something that is untrue.   And that untruth produces a harmful effect.  Few people seem to buy into one of the prime Buddha statements:  “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” 

It is interesting to note that some people think it is awful to have pain – and in so thinking that they create additional, needless ‘pain’, which is known as ‘suffering’.  All suffering is self created.  Pain is created outside of yourself, and it is only based on a physical happening that intersects with your body in some way or, to make some allowances for unconscious processes, it is created “instinctually”.   If someone makes you feel hurt or their statements make you feel hurt, you are thinking bullbleep statements that are not true – they simply made statements while you created the thoughts about those statements and you made yourself feel bad.   The “feel hurt” is a conceptual conversation where one attributes the incident as the cause of a bad emotion and then you interpret that as the equivalent of some harm done to you, as if it were real, like physical harm.  Yes, you feel the emotion of feeling “bad”, that is true.  But you created it yourself.   And no amount of justification makes it otherwise.

An amusing but foolish justification is “well, that is normal for people to feel that way.”  It may be usual or ‘normal’ for people to feel that way, but it is a logic error to think that “therefore I must feel that way” or it is “foreordained”.  The clue is that there are some people who would not ‘feel hurt’ at all, in the exact same circumstances.  So the difference has to be in their effective thought process (as there is no mysterious force at play here), so they do not create the suffering created from the dysfunctional thought/conversation. 

Every complex thing in your body and your mind is made up of lots of sub-units, or pieces.  Brilliant thoughts do not suddenly pop up from nothing into a complex whole.  They are formulated from bits and pieces in some sequence that might seem to happen instantly, without having to go through form and space.   Even though it happens “in a flash”, it is still a sequence that happens, just super fast, in milliseconds, thanks to the computer miracle called the mind.   

Thanks to the other super-super miracle we have the higher brain (System Two) to help program the lower computer (System One), which is a marvelous mechanistic wonder, but it is only mechanistic, not ethereal or mysterious.  


A WORD OF PERSPECTIVE

As you go to replacing the conversation in a certain area, your results will not feel satisfactory or complete.   The reason for that is that you will still have some corollary beliefs that are supporting the erroneous beliefs in the area you  are working on.

So, do as much as you can in each area.  Then work on the next one.  And as you work on the various areas, miraculously, it seems, the rest of the erroneous beliefs left in the other areas seem to fall away.  The cross support of erroneous beliefs will disappear, and suddenly there will be only truth and light left.



SO BUILD A BUILDING OF THOUGHTS, STRONG ENOUGH TO LIVE IN

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is simply to do the best you can in constructing a structure of thoughts that serve you well.   That’s it.  But if you don’t build it on purpose, then it is built randomly and with bad materials and you end up with it not serving you well. 

You are a person with no inherent worthiness or unworthiness, but you as a human made up from various inputs that you have to prove your worth in order to be loved and not kicked out of the tribe to die.  (Of course, you may not consciously be aware of those words, but years of evolution have caused the tendency to be driven to make sufficient contribution to the tribe that they will not kick you out from their protection and providing for you – cause if they do, you will not survive.  And if there is any one strongest instinct programmed in it is that for survival – and System One will do anything and everything it can to cover all the bases, constantly run alarms if needed, to assure your survival.  System Two can, however, instruct or program if necessary, your System One to “feel calm and safe”.

The rudimentary version of this is simply to breathe deeply and slowly, which triggers the brain to think it is safe (since when a person is safe, he will breathe deeply and slowly, as opposed to the shallow, rapid breathing that happens when there appears to be a threat to “steel” yourself against and to get ready to fight, flee, or freeze.   You also can tell your brain not to be in worry over something simply by writing down the action you’ll take, so it knows you (System Two) are in charge and it (System One, the employee) does not have to keep attention on it.  And stress immediately declines.  Simple.

Physical signals run both directions.  Thoughts run both directions.  And we can choose to send both to our lower brains (System One) to run the show. 

The most effective habit for people to have is to stop running on the treadmill of life without thinking, by simply engaging the higher brain by choice to pause, plan, and then pace yourself, where you are signaling System One that you are in control, using your thinking capability and doing the best you can to plan out what the steps are to change what needs to be changed (accepting initial mistakes inevitable to not at first knowing everything in the learning process), and then putting yourself into a smooth gear, that is neither hurried nor too slow, essentially “pacing” yourself, like a long distance runner not being so foolish as to sprint and exhaust oneself   (The reason to pace oneself is to keep one’s System One operating at its most functional support level; this is called homeostasis, which is something that System One will attempt to return to, but we often f’up the process and get  into unnecessary emergency/danger modes or surge, surge, surge modes without rest, flipping ourselves into huge dysfunctionalities, even affecting our DNA!)


HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DO THIS?

The perfection of it is a lifetime process.  But the sequence is a logical one, where the major gains are achieved in dealing with the most important 20% of what you are thinking, which is the 10% or 20% of your thoughts that are most harmful.

What is surprising to people, once they’ve done it, is that there are many fewer thoughts (misbeliefs) than they think there are, as it seems there are hundreds.  Yes, there are hundreds of combinations of the pieces, but the key pieces are mostly about 10 to 15.  There will be some that appear to be similar but different or separate, but they’ll dissolve without the support of the misbeliefs of the 10 or 15 erroneous beliefs. 

So, while I am concerned that you’ll think this takes too long, the truth is that it does take some time, but the “net cost” of it turns to zero and then a “net gain” in a rather short period of time (30 days of intensity or as in one program 8 days of intensity in the program and 2 days of intensely thinking and planning about it.  (The program mentioned is the Hoffman Institute, which has lots of help to help you think of these and work on them, and complete immersion in the process, both of which are excellent, excellent learning tools.)   (And you’ll not “goof off” or distract yourself into something else, as you feel accountable to these people.)


WHAT ARE THE PRIMARY CONVERSATIONS I SHOULD WORK ON

The dominant things that pop up to make you most unhappy are the conversations you should work on. 

In the start of the conversation, there was plenty of material.  An example of conversations that can be engaged in is under the section entitled “Barbara”, where each of the items listed as key need to be finished off.  And as they are finished off there is an accelerating upward curve one will feel, where one is relieved of the burdens of the thoughts that are holding them down, needlessly.

I am unworthy.

      I need other people for validation.  (I don’t or “can’t” validate myself.  There is no value there. [but you will learn otherwise and not buy into that false belief, though we do have some instinctual tendencies to deal with we can work with them to feel just fine].

I am helpless, not powerful.   I must be rescued (or I’m screwed).

     Everytime I get support, I go back to being a child and helpless and turn over making things happen for me to another person.  [this never works, but somehow we keep hoping it will.]

I have so many sorrows and hurts in my life.  [Really, all we have is unsuccessful intentions or undesired outcomes and that is no big deal, as it is part of life.  This is an extension of the habit of only noticing what is missing or what is wrong, rather than noticing the incredible amount that is present in abundance.  See Contrast Happiness Unhappiness and also Loss.]

    My dreams and hopes have been shattered. 

I can only motivate myself through criticism and punishment.  I am not enough.

     I’m extremely hard on myself for ________.  Insert something in the blank.  A person who has learned the lesson simply realizes that they can motivate themselves through wanting and ot through being a child manipulated by punishment and disapproval, but we learn to do this to ourselves – incredible.  Incredibly ignorant to hold onto this harmful practice/habit.  We are simply human, not having to be perfect at all to enjoy the incredible benefits available to us and realizing that there are almost no real threats and that proper sizing what happens has us realize that we are just dealingwith really small stuff.  (See the attitude in The 55 Sample Prostate Superbiopsy Experience, to note how proper sizing is used and how to minimize suffering.]   

      [Of course, you have some “logic’, at least you think it is logical, that has you hold harsh criticism as essential, like a person who whips himself unnecessarily and after while assumes he just deserves it (total bullbleep but we often believe the equivalent).  So, you need to figure out what you are telling yourself, at least as much as you can, perhaps using another person to help you deduce what you may be saying that you are not aware of.   To use another person effectively, you must do all, not part, in writing.]

The only problem with all of these is that they are based on the System One belief that if I don’t… or if I’m not…. Then I am screwed and will die a horrendous death at the hands of a vicious tiger – or the equivalent idea.  But the truth is that to survive, we only need to go to the government or our own sources, run down to a market all set up for us, and merely select what we want.  There is no survival at stake.  But somehow we believe there is.   [Incidentally, the actual test to see if we are actually worried about survival is the level of reaction we have to something, as the body is designed to react more strongly to the greater threats.  For instance, a person who panics is telling themselves that their life is threatened, even though that seems obviously not to be so.]

Through all of these made-up traumas (of which the emotions are real) coming from these made-up stories, we somehow (other than the stress the stories caused) come out of the other end just fine, intact, ok.  We only suffer from things we make up, though we do occasionally, very occasionally have actual physical pain.  Life if good.   One who believes otherwise is suffering from a self-created delusion and a set of beliefs that are not well founded.  They have no real problems, other than a cranial-rectal viewpoint. 


ANOTHER ASSIGNMENT

Consider this an important part of formulating the conversation that will work for you:

Question that occurred to me that you might try to answer, from the vantage point of your higher brain or higher self:

"What would it take to accept yourself as you are?"

Just write what comes to mind, for twenty minutes (even if you have to sit there for awhile until you think of something more), without censorship or editing, even including not so smart ideas.


WRITE AND MEMORIZE ALSO SOME FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Write your fundamental philosophy.  Make sure it is true (or possibly true).  Then install it so it comes up automatically.  That is always the secret for happy, successful, strong people, yet few people ever devise them for themselves, often stopping so far short of it that it is almost of no benefit.

I am totally at cause over my life.  No one and no thing rules my life.  Yes, there will be inconveniences and people not doing what I want them to do, including myself, but that is just the stuff of life.  There is so incredible much that is good about life.  I am filled with gratitude and appreciation.   I totally take care of myself and love myself like no other possibly could (and I accept that, as their chief concerns have to be about themselves, and they will never reach unconditional love for me, though the fiction is a nice fairy tale; however, I will do my best to reach unconditional love for myself, as the only person who can do that).

   
IS THIS ALL FOR NOW, I EXPECTED SOMETHING GREATER AND MORE PROFOUND

If you go through the homework of writing out all of these statements and then reworking them, you will be making profound changes, many from profound realizations as you are formulating the new philosophies and tossing out the junk. 

Just stick to this, until you have a completed product signed off by an expert, and then you’ll be ready for putting the icing on the cake, but you’ll already be happy, having removed the barriers to happiness….


While you are doing your homework, read the relevant pieces in the

Empowering Conversations Contents/Links 

And since most beliefs are already written about, with many replacement statements, you can access them in

Beliefs Contents/Links