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- Dmitri

Sometimes I’ll simply tell someone that something is possible for them, and they’ll believe me.

And they won’t stop there — they’ll live from this new belief, and get awesome new results.

That’s because an Authority can change beliefs. My Authority is so strong for these folks, it overrides their own belief and allows them to be different.

An “Authority” can change your belief about yourself when you believe in that authority more than you believe your current, limiting belief.

An Authority can be a coach, a therapist, a guru, a friend… It simply has to be someone you believe in more than you believe in your own limitation.

An Authority is someone where you stop and say, “Wow, if they say it, it must be true.”

It’s also part of why a Guru-type can say something and people actually change from hearing it. If you have enough confidence in the Guru’s Authority, you’ll “make the jump” to the new way of believing.

And it’s also why, as children, we’ll believe what our parents say, even in the face of (sometimes) ample evidence that they are wrong.

They have the authority, and we believe in that authority — more than we believe in our selves.

Authority is a great way to change beliefs. It’s fast, thorough, and — if the authority is strong enough — it makes permanent changes.

The change is only as good as the Authority you consult

The thing is…

Authority is a great way to get changes — but the changes are only as good as the Authority you consult.

That’s why when I work with people I help them to discover their relationship to their Highest Authority. I help them see — and take on for themselves — what their true Highest Authority — the Highest and Most Beautiful Reality they can conceive of — really believes is possible for them.

It doesn’t matter what  you call that Highest Authority. You might call it “God,” or “Nature,” or “the Universe.” You might call it “My Deepest Heart,” or “Inspiration,” or “My Inner Knowing.” The name you call it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is this: Whatever you believe your Highest Authority believes about you, you will automatically believe about yourself.

If you believe that your Highest Authority has a positive future for you, you’ll believe you have a positive future for yourself — and act accordingly. You’ll take all the actions of a person who believes they have a positive future, and get the results those actions create.

And by the same token, if you unconsciously believe that your Highest Authority has a negative fate in store for you, you’ll live from that belief, as well. You’ll take the actions of a person who believes they have a negative fate, and get those results in your life.

This is important because if you haven’t thought much about the Highest Authority you are believing in, you may have unconsciously taken on discouraging messages you’ve gotten from your parents, or from your childhood, as your Highest Authority.

And that can make it extremely difficult to be happy and effective in life.

How to discover what Highest Authority you are believing in

The poet Rumi says “Everyone had turned their face in some direction.” Each person has a sense of what the Highest Authority has in store for them — even if it’s generated by childhood messages.

No one is exempt… Which is why I suggest you think about the question: What Highest Authority are you listening to in the most important areas of your life?

Here’s how you discover what kind of Higher Authority you are believing in:

1. Get clear on a situation that is troubling you, then
2. Discover what you really believe your fate is in that situation, then
3. Ask yourself, “What’s the Highest Authority like in the world where that fate is true?”

The entrepreneur who had lost his motivation

Let me give you an example:

An entrepreneur recently called me for coaching because he wanted “some advice about how to be more motivated.” He had been sitting down to work, but couldn’t seem to get anything done. Most of his “work” time ended up being spend unproductively goofing off on Facebook.

Step 1: Get clear on a situation that is troubling him.

“I need help,” he told me. “I need to get stuff done. The stuff I need to do is actually stuff I want to do. It’s not like I hate it or anything — I actually care about it. But I just can’t seem to get myself to do anything.”

That was the situation that was troubling him.

Step 2: Discover what he really believes his fate is in that situation.

I wanted to know what he believed his fate was, so first I wanted to find out what he was up against.

“OK, I said. “So you want to be more productive. If I told you, ‘just go be more productive,’ what would you say was in the way of that? What’s the problem that you are up against in being more productive?”

“What am I up against?” he replied. “I’ll tell you what I’m up against: No matter what I do, nothing ever really seems to work. I’ve had some successes in my business, sure, but nothing has ever really ‘taken off’ for me. My hard work just doesn’t produce the results I want.”

“So,” I said, “When you find yourself up against the experience that your hard work doesn’t produce the results you want, what do you start to believe your fate will be?”

He thought about it, and said, “It seems like I’m fated to be the guy who has big dreams, and who wants to make an impact on the world, but who never actually gets anywhere. I’m fated to simply struggle in vain.”

“So,” I said to him, “You’re calling me for advice about how to be more motivated while you struggle in vain through life, is that it?”

He had to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Hearing that, I can see why I don’t have any motivation! If I’m fated to struggle in vain, I’d be a fool to do any work at all. It’d be pointless! I might as well goof off on Facebook all day.”

“Yes,” I said. “Advice isn’t going to help the guy who has already accepted it’s his fate to struggle in vain. We need to help you with your belief that you are fated to struggle in vain, no matter what you do.”

Step 3: What the Highest Authority like in the world where that is true?

I asked him, “What’s the Highest Authority like in the world where you created with a deep desire to make an impact on the world, but are fated to struggle in vain?”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s a very unfair and cruel god, to tell you the truth. It’s a Highest Authority who sets me up to fail, and who doesn’t care. Yuk!”

Yes,” I said. “That is the Authority you are paying attention to. That’s what you are believing in — that you are fated to struggle and fail. As long as you are facing that Highest Authority, you’re not going to have much motivation to get to work, no matter what else you do.”

He agreed that was true. The dark fate he was believing in had to be addressed.

Turning to the real Highest Authority

My client’s face was turned toward a Highest Authority who set him up to fail. And as long as he was faced in that direction, no matter how much great advice he got, no matter how many plans he made, it wouldn’t matter. His foundational belief that the Universe was setting him up to struggle in vain would always find a way to prevail.

Fortunately, just because you are faced in a direction doesn’t mean you have to keep facing that way.

There’s one more step to finish this process:

Step 4: Turn to the actual Highest and Most Beautiful Reality.

I asked him, “Look into your heart: is this Highest Authority who sets you up to fail really the Highest and Most Beautiful Reality you can conceive of?”

“No,” he said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“So let’s turn to the actual Highest Authority. Take this part of you that believes you are fated to to struggle in vain, and turn with it to your best sense of that true Highest and Most Beautiful Reality.”

He did so, turning in his imagination to his best sense of his True Highest Authority, the Highest and Most Beautiful Reality he could conceive of.

Immediately he started feeling a lot of light coming into that place in him that was holding on to the belief he was fated to struggle in vain.

“Wow,” he said. “I’m starting to see that I not fated to struggle in vain… And also that, in a way, it doesn’t matter whether or not I get the results I want from my actions. What’s important is that I do what’s put into my heart to do! I can see that if I do what’s in my heart, I’ll eventually get the results I want… Or something even better!

As he continued to experience his best sense of that true Highest Authority, he saw even more. “I can see that when I’m doing something because my heart is called to do it, great stuff can happen. In fact, I’m starting to see that I actually have no idea what amazing things might happen in my business, or which of my actions might spark a miracle. I have no idea just how great this could get, actually!”

At that point the call was effectively over. “I’ve got to get to work right now,” he said excitedly as we said goodbye. His new message from his Highest Authority — That he had no idea just how great things could get — had him totally motivated to get moving.

Which way is your face turned?

As Rumi says, “Everyone has turned their face in some direction.” He continues, “The saints have turned in the direction without directions. In the direction without directions all is spring; any other direction holds nothing but the cold of December.”

When you are upset, you have turned your face to a Highest Authority that is the cold of December. Like my client, you have started believing in a dark fate that saps you of will and motivation.

When my client turned toward the “direction without directions,” he was freed from the chains of his dark fate, and shown the real possibility for himself.

He became motivated to work with the expectation that something good would happen. And he began to have the eyes to recognize, the heart to receive, and hands to touch that good thing when it did finally appear

No amount of advice or coaching, no matter how good, would have changed my client’s situation until he’d had this shift in what he honestly believed was possible for him. That’s why it was critical for him to examine the Highest Authority he was faced towards.

And it’s also why it’s a great idea for you to discover what direction you are facing, yourself.

Try it for yourself

Here are those four steps again:

1. Get clear on a situation that is troubling you,
2. Discover what you really believe your fate is in that situation,
3. Ask yourself, “What’s the Highest Authority like in the world where that fate is true?,” and finally
4. Turn to the actual Highest and Most Beautiful Reality.

I hope you’ll find this helpful. And, as always, if you’re in a troubling situation and would like help, I’m available through one-on-one phone coaching. Email me at db [at] dbweb.org and we’ll set up a brief call to talk about what you might get out of us working together.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you most likely agree that “working on yourself” is important. You probably rely on doing “personal work” to heal old wounds, to get through tough times, and to move toward your goals.

I’m writing this today because I’ve seen a consistent problem in the way most people “work on themselves” that causes a lot of unnecessary pain.

This problem knocks the healing process off the straight path and will lead you ’round and ’round in circles instead.

Let me explain with a story

Recently I was leading a workshop, and my co-leader came up to me, obviously upset. He had just run a group experience that he felt failed to help one of the participants that he had really hoped it would help.

The moment he opened his mouth about it, he started beating up on himself. “It really makes me feel like I’m a worthless leader,” he told me. “I just feel like I’m not good enough and that I never will be. I feel ashamed and worthless, like I’m a fraud. I suck.”

Upon hearing himself say this stuff, he was actually a little taken aback. “Wow,” he said. “I seem to have some self-esteem problems in my leadership. I can see I need to work on my lack of confidence about how I lead!”

And that’s the mistake

My co-leader was going down the “rabbit hole” that I see people go down all the time. In the face of having the workshop not go the way he wanted, he had fallen into the trap of unconsciously asking himself “What does this experience mean ABOUT me?”

It’s like he asked his brain “What kind of a person would have this problem happen?” And his brain happily answered: “A worthless, not-good-enough fraud.”

Does that sound familiar? It’s so natural to go to these self-judgments when we have problems, you’ve probably experienced it yourself. Something doesn’t go the way you hoped, and your brain starts telling you what flaws in you caused it to go the way it went.

It’s natural. And it’s very painful. And it’s usually completely unnecessary.

You have to ask yourself the right question

I interrupted him by saying, “Let’s step away from the judgments about you, for a second. What I want to know is this: The experience you led for the group didn’t impact one of the participants the way you hoped it would. Rather than telling me what you think that means ABOUT you, I want to know what you think that means FOR you.

“Put another way,” I continued, “when the participant didn’t get what you’d hoped he’d get, you started believing something pretty negative about what is in store for you because of that. It’s like you’ve bought into a dark fate. What does it seem like your fate is going to be, in this situation, because of how things went?”

He thought about it for a moment before he answered. “Well, I start thinking he’s going to tell everyone about the bad experience he had, and it’s really going to impact my reputation. People who weren’t here and don’t understand will confront me, and I’ll end up having to deal with this and explain myself for months to come.”

“Right,” I said. “You’re upset because you’ve started to believe that what this experience means FOR you is that it’s is going to be a big, painful ordeal that wrecks your reputation and drags on for months and months. That’s what’s actually upsetting you. That belief in you is what you need to face.

“But as long as you focus on what this experience means ABOUT you — that you’re not good enough, a fraud, and so on — you’ll be running down the rabbit hole of trying to fix ‘your leadership self-esteem.’ Yes, it’s upsetting to think that you are not good enough, but that’s not the core of what’s upsetting you, and it’s not where you need to look.”

He thought about it. “Wow,” he finally said, “That’s true. I am telling myself that it’s gonna be a big painful ordeal, and that IS what’s upsetting me.”

He paused, letting it sink in. “And now that I think about it, I see that I’m overreacting a bit. Even if this is difficult, I’m not alone in the world. It’s not like armies of people are assembling against me or talking about me behind my back. The truth is, this is probably not going to be much of anything.” He was starting to calm down. “And even if it is, it helps to remember I’m not alone.” His breathing got easier. “I’m actually starting to feel much better. I can see that it’s going to be okay, no matter what happens.”

My co-leader was feeling the benefit of directly facing what was actually bothering him about the situation, rather than getting caught up in his judgments about what kind of person would be in that situation in the first place. And it was immediately helping him to relax and get perspective.

“But here’s what I don’t understand,” he said. “Why was I thinking all that stuff about not being good enough, worthless, and a fraud, if this is what’s really bothering me?”

“Those things were your brain’s made-up reasons WHY you were going to be stuck with that dark fate,” I answered.

“Think of it this way: You asked your brain why your reputation will be wrecked, and why this will drag on and on, and your brain came up with answers: You’re a fraud, you’re worthless, and so on. But if you had been a different person, your brain might have come up with totally different answers: People are against you, that participant is a jerk, this kind of thing always happens when the moon is in this phase, whatever. Your brain is a machine that’s great at making up answers. But in this case, those answers are just not useful.

“And to make matters worse, your brain didn’t just tell you what was wrong with you,  it also told you what you needed to do to fix it: work on your confidence as a leader.

“So you end up being a guy who’s already bought the idea that he’s in for a reputation-destroying ordeal, who’s trying to work on his confidence as a leader. How much progress do you think that guy is going to make, working on his confidence while he knows he’s already doomed?”

“None at all!” he answered with a laugh. “I can see now that looking at what this situation meant FOR me, rather than ABOUT me, really was the missing piece. Now that I have that in perspective, I’m not feeling like like a not-good-enough fraud anymore, either!”

Bonus examples

People have been telling me examples really help them understand my teachings, so here are three more “bonus” examples of this dynamic from people I’ve worked with. You can skip to the next section if you don’t need more examples and are ready to read about what’s in it for you to try this.

- One of my clients was a teacher who was upset because some of her students didn’t participate in her classes. What it meant ABOUT her (to her) was that she was a bad teacher. Therefore, she concluded, she needed to prepare more, and plan out everything she was going to say perfectly.

But when we looked into it more deeply, what it meant FOR her was that she wasn’t going to be able to make a difference. That belief was the core of her upset. So she had become a woman who subconsciously believed that she wasn’t going to be able to make a difference, trying to plan perfect, impactful classes for her students. Not surprisingly, that wasn’t working.

- A man I worked with was upset because he didn’t know if his girlfriend was the woman for him. What it meant ABOUT him (to him) was that he was a man who couldn’t commit. Therefore, in his view, he needed to really push himself and make himself commit fully to his girlfriend.

But when we looked deeper, we found that what it meant FOR him was that he was doomed to a life that only went “partway.” So he had become a man whose life was only going to go partway, desperately trying to commit fully. Naturally, he couldn’t do it.

- Another man I worked with came to me complaining that it seemed like circumstances kept stopping him from doing the things he wanted to do. What it meant ABOUT him (to him) was that he was weak and unfocused. Therefore, he concluded, he needed to find a way to make himself get his act together.

But when we looked into it more deeply, what it meant FOR him was that what he had to give wasn’t going to be expressed. So he had become a man who subconsciously already “knew” he wasn’t going to be able to give what he had to give, trying to get his act together so he could express himself in his life. Clearly, that simply wasn’t going to work.

The first step for all these people was to step away from their self-judgments about what their circumstances meant ABOUT them, and to start looking honestly about what they were unconsciously believing their circumstances meant FOR them.

When they were able to see that, they stopped being “at odds” with themselves, and were able to start creating real change on their issues.

What’s in it for you to try this?

Now you might be saying, “This is cool, but how is it really helpful? I’m just replacing one question with another. I’m going from feeling bad about my self to feeling bad about my future. So what’s so special about asking what a situation means FOR me versus what it means ABOUT me?”

Two things make this special –

First, the upset of what it means FOR you usually hurts a lot less than your made-up reasons about what a bad person you are for having your problem in the first place.

When my co-leader was believing he was a fraud and not good enough, it whipped up such a level of drama and all-encompassing fear that he felt instantly better just seeing what was actually upsetting him.

Second, when you ask “What does this mean FOR me,” you stop “barking up the wrong tree,” and that helps a lot.

When my co-leader started believing that he needed to work on his “lack of confidence as a leader,” he was barking up the wrong tree. Working on his “confidence” was a way of fixing feeling like he was a fraud… But since “being a fraud” wasn’t the core of what was upsetting him, working on his “confidence” would be frustrating and not really helpful.

He still had healing to do once he saw was was actually upsetting him, but it was much easier for him to start experiencing that healing because he was looking in the right place, rather than “barking up the wrong tree.”

So….

Think of all the pain you’ve experienced from calling yourself names and beating up on yourself.

And think of all the time you might have spent working on issues like “low self-esteem,” or “lack of confidence.”

Much of that unpleasantness came from unconsciously asking, “What does this mean ABOUT me?”

And much of that gets bypassed when you ask “What does this mean FOR me?”

How to do it

The way to do it is simple: When you find yourself getting upset, ask “What unpleasant fate am I starting to believe that this situation means for me? What heart-breaking future am I starting to buy into?” When you do that, you are facing what is actually bothering you, and are positioned to start getting some perspective and healing on it.

I invite you to try it out, and to post your results as comments on this post or to send me an email telling me what you got out of it.

I’m here to help if you need it

If you’d like my help in discovering what’s really bothering you and experiencing the new strength and inner resources you get when you “come out the other side,” you may be interested in my individual phone coaching.

Here’s what one man wrote me after his phone session:

“I have much appreciation and gratitude for the dynamic you guided me through. I feel much lighter and more present. I have awareness and my pride back with who I am once again. Infinite goodness is flowing to me and through me all the time. Anything less than that is just a little bump in the road and surely I will bounce over it.”

Send me and email at db [at] dbweb.org and we’ll set up a brief call to say hi and see if my coaching might be right for you.

It turns out that when you know when to ask “Why?” — and more importantly, when when you know not to ask “Why?” — you’ll be able to remove a real source of pain from your healing process.

Let me explain by telling you a story…

I often work with people who struggle with compulsive behaviors.

One woman I worked with, for instance, had a goal of becoming more fit and losing the extra pounds she had picked up.

She had intelligent rules about eating — no refined sugar, no eating after 8pm, and so on — and also had a commitment to work out five days a week.

But along the way to fulfilling her goal, she would occasionally backslide.

I spoke to her one morning after she had backslid the previous evening — with a plateful of chocolate chip cookies a friend had left at her house after a dinner party.

Perhaps you can relate — if not with food, then about some other area in your life where you’ve tried to make a change, but backslid on your commitment.

My client was upset about having eaten the cookies. Very upset. She’d done a lot of work on her health-improvement program, and the last things she needed was to be eating food that went against her goals.

To make matters worse, this wasn’t the first time she had backslid on her commitment. She would be fine for a while, moving toward her health goal, then find herself eating food she had committed herself to not eating.

Again, perhaps you can relate.

When I got on the phone with her that morning, her first question for me was:

“I want to know why I did this! Why do I keep backsliding? Why do I always end up eating the sweet stuff, no matter what I do?”

Essentially, she was asking, “Why?”

But “Why?” was exactly the wrong question for her to be asking in that moment.

In fact, asking “Why?” at that moment was actually destructive to her, because she was asking it at the wrong time.

To understand the truth of that, you have to understand a bit about who you are “being” when you are upset.

Who you are being when you are upset

Here’s an important fact:

The person you are “being” when you are upset is the wrong person to be making explanations for why you did what you did.

Let’s take a moment to look at who you are “being” when you are upset about backsliding on a commitment.

When you’ve backslid, you wanted to behave a certain way, and you did your best…
but you still ended up doing something you didn’t want to do.

And, in that moment, you are discouraged.

A good definition of “discouraged” is “believing that things are not going to get better, no matter what you do.”

When you are being a discouraged person — like my client was, after eating all those cookies — you are being a person who believes that no matter what you do, things aren’t going to get better for you.

So when you ask “Why?” when you are discouraged, you are asking exactly the wrong person — you are asking the “you” who believes that things aren’t ever going to get better.

And from the belief that “nothing will ever get better,” what kind of explanations do you come up with for “Why did I do this?”

I’ll give you a hint: You think of discouraging, depressing, and shaming explanations.

Try it out for yourself:

• Imagine that you are standing in front of yourself, so you can see yourself from the outside.
• Now specifically see yourself after you’ve done something that you had decided you wouldn’t do — perhaps overeating, or overspending, or “blowing your top” with your spouse or children, or whatever it is you are trying to not do.
• Let yourself see how discouraged that person is.
• And go deeper. Really let yourself see the world that person inhabits. See how it’s a world where things don’t get better, where suffering doesn’t have any meaning, and where trying doesn’t make any difference.
• Now ask that person “Why did you do this?”

You’ll find that the answers are sourced out of that negative world. You’ll get answers like…

• “I did this because I don’t have enough will power,” or
• “I did this because I’m just a screw-up,” or
• “I did this because I don’t try hard enough.”

Or you’ll get some long, technical explanation, complete with suggestions for improvement… But it will all be in the context of being a person for whom nothing will ever get better, so those approaches have very little chance of success.

These are the kinds of answers you’ll get from yourself when your heart is hurting and you are discouraged… And none of those answers will do you the slightest bit of good.

How we use “Why?” to avoid facing upset

Asking “Why?” when your heart is hurting just isn’t helpful. You are asking a discouraged person, and a discouraged person’s explanations, no matter how intelligent-sounding they may be, will always increase your suffering in the situation.

Before you ask “Why?”, you have to heal the heart that is hurting.

But that requires facing some facts you might not want to face.

Too often people run to explanations about “Why?” as a way of trying to avoid facing what actually happened, and how they feel about what actually happened.

Asking “Why?” can be an attempt to “end run” around facing your upset. The subconscious thinking is, If you can find an answer to “Why?”, maybe you can fix your upset, and not have to face your pain about it.

The only problem with that approach is it doesn’t work.

Healing the heart that is hurting

The first step of taking care of your heart is to face that you actually did something that you wish you hadn’t done, and to face the fact that your heart is hurting from that.

Now, I’m not saying you have to wallow in the pain of it. You don’t. And I’m most certainly not saying you should beat up on yourself about it.

But you do need to get to the “ouch” of it, rather than pursuing explanations about it.

Facing it means you get to the point of being able to say, “Wow, I did that. It hurts. I’m upset about it. Ouch. I’m probably not a person who should be constructing big explanations about ‘Why?’ ’til I’m healed of this pain.”

The next step is to take your discouraging belief that “this can never change,” and bring it to the Light. That may be the light of the Divine as you know it. It may be the light of your Inner Knowing, or your Deepest Heart. Whatever you call it, you need to take that belief that “this can never change” to a higher authority, and ask, “Is this really true?” Then you need to wait for and receive an answer.

You can do that by sitting quietly and turning internally to the Light, and saying something like, “I’m believing that I’m doomed to having this situation never change, and that I’ll never get out of it. As I turn to the Light, I’m asking… Is that really true? Or is there some other truth about this I can live from?”

You can also do that with the guidance of a coach, a therapist, or a support group.

The bottom line is, the pain of “This can never change” has to be healed before you start making up theories about why this behavior happened and what you should do about it.

As my client started brining her feeling of hopelessness to what she thought of as “the Great Spirit,” she began to see that there was love in the universe for that part of her that had backslid.

And as that hurting part of her began to open to the love, she saw that her ups and downs were part of a process that was taking her to where she wanted to go. She began to feel a renewed vigor for pursuing her health goals. She was able to release the pain of her past behavior and got “back on track.”

She also found that her need to ask “Why?” fell away. As she experienced herself being on a path toward health and healing, she realized that all she really needed to do was to keep feeling that sense of being on a path, and that she would be guided.

She also noticed that she most tended to “cheat” when there was surgary foods in her house, and she found herself with the motivation to make sure that situation didn’t happen in the future.

So — Why did you do that?

Once your heart is no longer discouraged, then it’s okay to go ahead and ask “Why?” if it seems like that will be helpful.

But…

You may well find that the answer to “Why?” is not even necessary.

Once you are in a healed place with light in your heart, you may find — like my client — that your inner guidance is so improved that all you need to do is follow it.

In fact, you are likely to find that your inner guidance will keep you on the “straight and narrow,” far better than any “why-explanation” would.

What to “take away” from this posting

Here’s what I suggest you take away from this posting:

When you are upset, avoid asking “Why?” and face that your heart is hurting.

Get healing for that hurting before you look for an answer to “Why?”, and you’ll be able to take action and make changes much better that you would be able to if you asked “Why?” from a place of discouragement.

And here’s a PS — This works anytime you want to ask “Why?” when you are upset about anything — not just about your own behavior. “Why did he do that?” “Why did she leave me?”, etc. If your heart is hurting, that’s the place to look first.

In fact, I’ve probably said it once or twice myself.

But there’s a problem with saying “My problem is I’m too nice.” I’ve noticed that, most of the time, the people who say it are often the same people who can be overly harsh and sometimes even mean.

Yes, sometimes they are “doormats” for the world, but at other times, if anything, they go overboard with compensating for that, in the pursuit of not being “too nice.”

And in my observation, that has never helped their situations.

Today I’d like to help you get to what is really going on if you find yourself thinking “My problem is I’m too nice,” and offer some guidance of where you really need to look if you feel like you’ve been stuck being a doormat.

The man who was betrayed in business once too often

I’m thinking about this because I had a client come to me recently, complaining that his problem was he was “too nice.”

For most of his career he had worked with people who didn’t give him the respect he thought he deserved. His experience was that they treated him like a second-class citizen, and that they betrayed him and “cut him out” of the good, profitable, or interesting work without a second thought when it seemed like it would benefit them.

And he had evidence for this — it wasn’t just a baseless, groundless fantasy. In fact, he had quite a lot to say on the subject.

But because he felt like he didn’t have any other options, he had put up with this for years. He’d swallow his pride and wait for them to behave in ways that were more to his liking.

But he recently had experienced the “last straw.” Someone he’d worked with for years on building a profitable venture started selling an almost identical product to their joint customers and not sharing the revenue with him.

And he was extremely angry about it.

He was ready to “stop being too nice.”

But…

It still felt like he didn’t have any good options. He came to me feeling like his only options were to either roll over and “just take it,” or to destroy everything he’d worked for in a big confrontation. And even though he was sick of being “too nice,” the idea of destroying what he’d worked for didn’t sound very good to him, either.

He also found his mind was obsessing about what his associates had done, and endlessly running unsatisfying conversations in his head about the current situation, past similar situations, what he should say, what he should have said, what they must be thinking to treat him that way, and so on.

He was further confused by the fact that he actually DID like a lot about these people. He knew they weren’t evil. They had long-standing friendships. But yet, he constantly felt mistreated.

All this mental upset left him feeling even less prepared for a confrontation with his business associates. He was afraid he’d act crazily, start yelling, or apologize and retreat into being a doormat again.

With all the pain it was putting him in, “stopping being too nice” wasn’t seeming like such a great option. But it was the only thing he could think of. He sure couldn’t stand being a doormat anymore.

Finding the upsetting “fate”

When you are upset about something, it’s important to figure out what is really upsetting you, or it becomes very difficult to heal.

The truth was, “being too nice” wasn’t what was really upsetting my client. Therefore the solution he was finding — “be less nice” — wasn’t seeming helpful to him.

It was as if a doctor gave him a prescription for a disease he didn’t have. It wasn’t helpful.

As my friend James Keeley says, “When you are upset about something, you need to look at the fate that you are believing you are being stuck with.”

“My problem is I’m too nice” isn’t a statement about what my client believed his fate was. It is actually a made-up explanation about why things are the way they are.

As I worked with my client, he began to see that he was, in fact, actually upset because he was believing in a fate that was far beyond simply “being too nice.”

He was believing that he was fated to always be betrayed in business.

That core belief about his future fate was what was really making him crazy.

As we explored the impact of that belief, he saw that it left him either

1) resigning himself to being a doormat in business or

2) coming out swinging, hitting hard and basically “getting them before they can do it to me again.”

He began to see that as long as he believed that it was a fact that he was going to get betrayed, it didn’t matter how good he became at “not being too nice.” He was being “the guy who always got betrayed in business.”

He’d be going into those conversations already knowing how they were going to end, and subconsciously not allowing for any other option.

Trying to fix “being too nice” was working on the wrong problem. The fate of always being betrayed was still in the background, governing how things would turn out.

And that belief was what needed to change.

Turning to the light of his deepest heart

My client didn’t need to worry about being “too nice” or “not nice enough.” He needed to turn to his experience of something greater and get perspective on whether or not it was really, actually true that the universe was set up so that he was always fated to be betrayed in business.

While many of my clients think in terms of a Higher Power in these conversations, what worked best for him was to turn to “the light of his deepest heart.”

As we went through the process of turning to the light of his deepest heart, he began to see that there was a love for him in the universe, and for his business dealings, that went beyond anything he ever imagined.

The softness of that light and love helped him begin to sense that there were other behavior options than being “too nice” or being “too harsh.”

As he started feeling that other options were available to him, he began to feel at peace with the situation. He began to feel the inner resource he needed to be able to speak in a powerful, direct way to his business associates about what was going on, without being a doormat, and without being too harsh.

Furthermore, as he spent time turned to his inner light, he began to sense that he was on a path in life, and that he didn’t have to worry about getting where he was going to go.

He began to see that, on that path, he would be given the “right things to say,” and didn’t need to pre-practice his conversations with his associates. He began to relax.

And as he spent time feeling the energy of these insights, he started to see that he had other options in his life, and that he didn’t need to keep working with people who didn’t treat him with respect.

He said, “I’m seeing that I’ve been acting like someone who isn’t valuable to work with, so that’s how people have been treating me.” He actually became excited about the thought of finding new people to work with, rather than depressed by it. At the same time, he became also open to being treated better by the people he worked with.

In that moment, he stopped living as “the guy who is fated to get betrayed in business” (and who therefore needed to “stop being so nice”), and started living as someone who was clear about what he wanted and knew that there were options for him in the world, outside of the group of people with whom he had been working.

And equally importantly, he felt freed from having to obsess about the situation. “I don’t feel the compulsion to think about it all the time,” he told me.

Now it’s your turn…

So next time you are upset about something, ask yourself,

- “What unpleasant fate does this situation make me think I’m doomed to?”, or

- What does it seem like your life going to have to be like because of this upsetting situation?”

Once you face what’s actually upsetting you, you can bring that to your own experience of your inner Blessing Energy, be it your Higher Power, Deepest Heart, or whatever works for you.

You can ask, “Is it true that I’m fated to this?,” and let yourself experience the energy and blessing that comes with the answer.

I haven’t heard back yet from my client about what happened next in his situation, but you can probably sense that the internal shift he made could make a huge difference. He had become a man who could go into difficult business conversations as someone who had other options, rather than someone who was fated to be betrayed. The odds of having some good, positive outcome went up exponentially.

I invite you to post your results and/or questions below.

A coaching client recently told me this:

“I know a woman who wants to get married and have babies, so she’s set up a nursery in her house, and spends time sitting in it reading baby books, as if she is reading to an actual baby.

“I asked her about it, and she said that it’s important to create the space for what you want to attract in your life. She said it’s important to really believe in it, and to live as if it’s already in your life, which is what she is doing. But it sounds crazy to me — she’s not out meeting potential husbands, she’s sitting at home reading baby books! What’s up with this?”

I had to admit, she really was visualizing the outcome she wanted. She really was living as if her outcome was true, and had already happened. She had aligned her mind to “attraction,” by making the space for what she wanted in her life.

But the fact is, I (and my client) both found her behavior sort of creepy.

But why is it creepy? Fawn gives me the answer.

What is wrong with this picture? What is the problem with this woman staying home reading baby books, and visualizing having the life she longs for?

I was racking my brains trying to figure this out, when my wife Fawn came up with an example that explained it.

She said,

Imagine you lived on a busy street, and you find yourself really longing for a new traffic signal and crosswalk by your house. You really want that crosswalk, and you want to attract that change into your life.

You could imagine that it was there. You could really visualize it. You could totally believe in it…

But if you wandered blithely out into traffic as if the traffic signal was already there, expecting cars to stop the way they would at a crosswalk, you would be in for a very nasty surprise.

The sad fact is, no matter how well you had visualized that traffic signal and crosswalk, and no matter how well you were “Making the space for it” by living like it was already there, you’d be a fool to live as though it WAS there.

Because it’s not there. And pretending it IS there is a good way to get run over.

Living FROM your future vision is different than living IN it

That got me thinking:

There’s a difference between living from a future vision, and living in that vision. One is an empowered space from which to take action. The other is a fantasy world of magical thinking that can get you hit by the realities of life.

Let me explain.

When you live from a vision of the future, you’ve felt a longing for a way your life could be — for instance, you could have a husband and child, or there could be a traffic signal near your house. Whatever it is, it’s a calling of your heart that draws you toward it.

But most of the time, when you have a longing in your heart, there’s a reason that it hasn’t been fulfilled, and here it is: In some way, you have a hard time believing that possible future could actually come true.

That’s because

- You’ve tried and failed in the past, and got hurt by that experience, and have lost heart, or

- You never even tried, because you grew up being taught that it simply wasn’t possible for you to have that heart’s longing fulfilled.

For whatever reason, some part of your heart has given up on ever getting what you want. You’ve accepted that it’s impossible, even though accepting that has been heartbreaking.

When you’ve lost heart, you have to attend to that loss of heart, if you ever want the future you’ve given up on to come true.

You can’t simply live in a fantasy future, pretending you haven’t given up, and get the results you want out of life. It simply won’t work.

You have to do the heart-level work that restores in you the feeling that you can, in fact, have what you want.

Put another way, you have to do the work of clearing the painful beliefs that made you give up, so you can come to really believe in the possibility of your vision becoming true.

You’ve got to get to the point where you feel the wonderful feeling of knowing that, even though you may have to make some effort to get what you want, the future isn’t written yet and you are most certainly not doomed to fail.

When your heart knows this, you can live from the future you are trying to create. You get inspired to take action by your knowledge that the world you desire is possible for you.

In fact, you become impossible to hold back.

If you are longing for a husband and child, and you’ve cleared your blocking beliefs, and you know in your heart that it’s possible for you to have what you want, then you won’t just sit at home reading baby books.

Try this mental experiment yourself

Let yourself feel how it would be to be in that woman’s shoes — only now having the knowledge that the bright future you desires is possible for you.

Would you stay home reading baby books?

More likely, you’d be inspired to take action, to meet men, to follow up on leads, and to get out and live a life that would put you around the kind of people who could help your dream come true.

Similarly, if you longed for a traffic signal near your house, and you knew it was possible, you would be empowered to take action, to circulate petitions, to find out what needed to be done and who needed to be persuaded, to make your outcome a reality. You would not simply visualize it existing, then wander out into the street.

When you live from your future vision, you feel the real possibility of your outcome happening, and allow that to inspire you to do what you need to do next.

That kind of heart-based certainty — plus action — really does attract synchronicity and unpredictable positive accidents. Good things compound, and miracles happen.

When you live in the future, on the other hand, you are simply fantasizing that you already have what you are after — which you don’t. Rather than being inspired to take action that can get a whole series of unexpected miracles to occur, you sit in the fantasy and do nothing. That doesn’t attract anything — at least not anything good — and is a disappointing way to live.

How to do it in your life

So think about it…

-  What is a longing of your heart that has yet to be fulfilled? Really let yourself acknowledge what it is.

- Then answer this key question: How have you lost heart in that outcome? What is the block, or the difficulty — not in the world, but in your own belief system?

Have you tried and failed once too often? Does it seem too hard? Do you simply not know how to begin? Or is it just that you’re doom, and that “people like you” never get that kind of thing to happen? What is the blocking belief that is stopping you?

- And finally, do what it takes to transform that limiting belief into something positive, so you can have the motivation to take action, without having to struggle and suffer along the way.

Now, I know it’s easy to say “do what it takes.” But I mean it. All of my work is about helping people get through those very moments, and I’m happy to assist you (see the end of this email for how), but the fact is you probably have some resources in your life right now you can use to make that kind of a change.

If you have a support group, ask them to help you.

If you have a therapist or coach, bring it to him or her.

Just remember, you are not looking for advice — You are looking for someone to help facilitate a real transformation, so that this block no longer stops you, and you can be full of unambiguous energy toward pursuing your goal.

You are not looking to be told “Just stop believing that.” That’s not enough to really change a limiting belief.

When you’ve cleared away the beliefs that are stopping you, your future vision will be something you can live from, and you’ll be easily able to take actions to bring that vision into the world.

Taking action on that vision won’t be a struggle. You’ll be like the “arrow sprung from the bow.”

I truly believe that this is how people change their lives, and how people change the world we all live in. I hope these guidelines will help you create the kind of change in your life that you are longing for.

And if you need assistance…

Sometimes we all need some assistance getting through a blocked place. If you have some area in your life where you have lost heart, or in which you feel stuck, or have given up, my coaching may be for you.

My coaching is designed to help people heal the areas where they have “lost heart” in life, and to help them find the inner resource they need to go for their heart’s deepest longings.

You can discover more about it at:

http://dbweb.org/coaching

Or email me (links to my contact page).

I’d love to hear the results that folks get trying this out… Feel free to share or ask questions below.

First, by how hard it is to precisely define compassion in a way that really encompasses it — and

Second, by how well you can be guided in being compassionate by simple “do and don’t” -style rules.

Today I want to talk about the experience of compassion… And to give you the first surprising thing I’ve discovered about using compassion to bring healing to yourself and to others.

WHAT IS COMPASSION?

Of course, I’m not in any way the first person to write about compassion — it’s a BIG subject. The Buddha said that “Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others.” Some have described it as an “emotional resonance.” I think of it as “feeling for” or “feeling with” someone as they are going through difficulty.

But rather than struggle with definitions, let’s talk instead about the sensation of compassion — where the “rubber hits the road” in your experience.

How do you know if you are feeling compassion, for yourself or for someone else?

– Compassion is the “awww” moment, when your heart is moved to say “awww, that’s rough” to someone.

- Compassion feels like the “arms of your heart” reaching out to surround someone who is in difficulty.

- Compassion is a feeling of flowing from your heart to someone who is in having a hard time.

Additionally, in the moment of compassion you have stepped away from judgments about whether or not the person SHOULD or should NOT be feeling the way they feel. You’ve also have stepped away from the great advice you’d love to give them, but that they are not in a place to hear.

You are simply sitting with them (or with yourself) in the authentic acknowledgement of how difficult something is.

COMPASSION FEELS “WITH” THE UPSET, NOT “ALL OF” THE UPSET

Now let’s talk about pain. How much of a person’s pain do you have to feel in order to be compassionate with them?

You probably already intuitively know that, if you are being compassionate for someone who is upset, you don’t have to get as upset as they are, or feel as agonized as they feel.

Well, here’s something that is a huge relief for some folks:

You don’t have to feel every ounce of YOUR pain and upset, either, to have compassion for yourself, and to get healed.

I like to say that this is “feeling WITH the upset, but not feeling ALL OF the upset.”

Let me explain…

A lot of healing work emphasizes the importance of feeling your feelings fully. This way of thinking says that if you are sad, you should cry with your whole heart, and if you are angry, you should express it with your whole body.

While there’s a lot to be said for this approach, it also has drawbacks. Upset feelings are often scary, and most people have no interest in feeling and expressing them fully. Therefore, those folks will never get the benefit of that kind of healing work. In fact, they run from it.

Also, the “feel it fully” approach also requires a supportive environment in which to express those feelings. It also needs competent facilitation to help you find a new meaning through that expression. These things are not always available.

If you are working with some upset of your own, it is worth knowing that you do NOT need to experience the pain, anger, fear, shame, or whatever “fully” in order to get the benefits of self-compassion, and the healing that comes with it.

This is really good news.

SO HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO FEEL IT?

So how much DO you need to feel those painful feelings in order to heal?

The answer is simple:

You must step in to feeling the upset enough to know, in your heart — that is, on an immediate, emotional level — that in order to get through this, you need something more than what you’ve been able to generate on your own.

Put another way, you’ve got to experience the upset enough to feel the urgency of your need for some new resource to come to you.

If you don’t do that, the “well of compassion” won’t be able to open to you. Instead of feeling a flow of love, your experience of compassion will be dry.

Put even yet another way (don’t worry, I have plenty more): If you are completely separate from the emotions of your upset, then your heart can’t open to your need for compassion … because your heart is NOT INVOLVED. You have to involve your heart in the upset in order to feel the compassion.

But, by the same token, you DO NOT need to become absolutely overwhelmed by the feelings of the upset, either. You only need to feel the upset enough to really be present with it, and to reveal your own need.

There’s a saying in spiritual healing that “Nothing pleads with the Divine on your behalf better than your own needy heart.” Whether or not you believe in a “Divine,” I do think it’s true that an authentic admission of your need helps open up the flow of compassion, whether it comes from Somewhere Else, or from deep in your own Heart or Mind.

HOW TO DO IT

Here’s how you can start building your “muscle” of opening with compassion to yourself.

First, pick some upset in your life. You may want to start with a small upset; a problem with a coworker, frustration with morning traffic, a surprise bill that came that you weren’t ready for, or some other annoyance of life that is sticking with you today. It can also be an old upset… something that happened a while ago that isn’t wrecking your life, but that you still aren’t quite complete about.

It should be big enough that you actually are upset about it, but (to start) not the biggest upset of your entire life. (You can build to that later as you start to get this circuit really working for you.)

Second, imagine yourself, standing in front of you, experiencing that upset, almost as if you are looking at someone else who has that exact same problem as you do.

Allow yourself to step away from any judgements or advice you may have for this person, and let yourself feel the need of that person’s heart for something beyond what he can give to him- or herself.

Third, begin to notice how you can gauge and control how much or how little you feel the painful feelings of this person before you. You can touch the pain a little bit, a lot, or none at all. I think of it like a “slider switch,” that I can slide up or down to increase or decrease the intensity. Experiment with coming closer to the pain, and moving further away.

As you allow yourself to move toward the upset, ask yourself, “am I connecting with this person’s pain enough yet for their need to open my flow of compassion?” Remember, you only need to experience the upset enough to get your heart to open in compassion. You may be surprised by how little suffering that takes.

Once you start to feel the compassion — the sense of “aww, that’s hard” — notice how a Blessing Current starts to flow to that “you” in front of you. It may be a small flow at first, just a trickle, but that’s okay.

Let that Blessing Current guide you in delivering a blessing to that person before you. It may simply be a touch, as if you are putting your hand on his or her heart and letting a blessing energy flow in.

Or, you may experience some sort of freeing insight, or some new way of seeing the upsetting situation.

Or it may just be a general sense of a new peacefulness around the upset, and a new will to let go, and move on.

Whatever it is, let yourself experience the good feelings of that. That’s how self-compassion can bring healing.

BEING THE EMPTY CUP

I once heart Mark Silver, from heartofbusiness.com, say that “It’s the empty cup that can be filled.” By acknowledging your need, without being overwhelmed by your pain, you can become that “empty cup” that attracts compassion and healing. You can even attract it from yourself… And that brings healing and peace.

And that’s too bad, because opening your heart to yourself is a critical part of any healing experience. The better you are at it, the faster and deeper you will heal from any upset.

If you know me (ether through these newsletters or from my seminars or phone coaching), you know that I’m always looking for the “secret ingredient” — the one thing in any situation that has a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

In the healing process, one “secret ingredient” — the simple thing that accelerates you toward the “healing moment” — is self-compassion.

Opening your heart to YOURSELF does more to bring about healing than just about anything else.

Over the next few posts I’m going to share some tips, techniques and insights I’ve found have made it easier for people to access their self-compassion. (And, as a bonus, it will also make it easier for you to be compassionate to others!)

Once you know these simple steps you’ll be able to get through upsetting experiences faster, get unstuck more quickly, be able to go for what you want with your whole heart. You’ll also be able to be happier and more at peace no matter what your circumstances.

FIRST– ARE YOU BEING COMPASSIONATE FOR YOURSELF?

It can be hard to tell if you are being compassionate for yourself. Here are some clues that you are NOT being as compassionate for yourself as you could be:

CLUE ONE: You are feeling cut off from what you need. You feel cut off from any sense of being nurtured, by Something Greater or even other people. It feels like the world is on your shoulders, you are alone, and you are inadequate to the task of making it through.

CLUE TWO: You are trying to generate what you need for yourself by being smarter or working harder. If what you need can’t come to you from the Universe, you try to create it for yourself — by working harder, being smarter, and pushing yourself more.

That’s difficult, though, because if you are in an upset, you are probably ALREADY doing your best to get out of it. You ALREADY are trying harder. You ALREADY are at 100% effort… and trying harder, while painful, doesn’t really help.

CLUE THREE: You are trying to get away from your experience of what is happening.

Because it seems like there’s nowhere to turn for healing (and trying harder isn’t working), you’ll then try to get away from the experience by employing a distraction.

Different people use different distractions. You might like goofing off on the internet, or eating, or watching television. What all distractions have in common is they try to take you out of the feeling of being upset, alone, and unable to work your way out of the problem.

CLUE FOUR: You are criticizing yourself for being upset. “I shouldn’t feel this way,” “I’m just being a baby,” “I should buck up,” “I’m probably just being dramatic” — these are all self-criticisms that are signs that compassion is MISSING from how you are handling being upset.

If any of these clues seem familiar to you — if you find yourself feeling cut off, trying harder, avoiding your experience and criticizing yourself — then you have an “improvement opportunity,” and will benefit from developing your compassion toward yourself.

COMPASSION OPENS A DOOR

Opening to self-compassion breaks that cycle of loneliness, fixing, criticizing, and distracting. It “breaks the state” of simply trying to fix things, and opens you to a new energy that’s beyond your own ability to “noodle your way through.”

If you’ve ever seen someone who has just had a breakthrough, you know how they are lit up with a new energy inside of them. They have a new hope, and can see new opportunities, and can take action where they previously could not.

A new energy has come to them that is beyond what they could generate for themselves by trying harder, or going at it alone. I think of this energy as a Blessing Current… and when you are in touch with it, your heart becomes filled and you become inspired and empowered to move forward.

If you examine the process they went through to get there, you’ll find that, at some pivotal moment, they opened to compassion for themselves. Perhaps they acknowledged their need for love and opened to it. Or they acknowledged how painful a situation has been, and opened their heart to themselves. They may even have acknowledged their need to take action and set a boundary, and really put their heart fully into doing so.

As they opened to that compassion, it opened the door to the Blessing Current started to flow for them… and transformation became possible.

Opening to yourself in compassion is a way to get the flow of that Blessing Current started. Once you know how to do it, it’s something you can do at any time, no matter what else is going on.

I hope I’ve helped convince you that developing self-compassion is worth some time and effort. In the next posts I’ll share more about how you can start to open to compassion for yourself… some surprising facts about compassion… and some unexpected do’s and don’t's of being compassionate. I’ll also share the traps of compassion that you’ll want to be able to avoid.

I’m excited to be posting this 32-minute interview with Jim and Zaina Keeley.

Jim has more concentrated, useful, practical wisdom than almost anyone I’ve ever worked with, and I make it my business to show up at most of his workshops, no matter where they are.

Jim and Zaina have been married for 10 years, and are happier together all the time. The love and the excitement of the relationship has lasted for them.

At the end of July they are running their first relationships workshop.

My future wife and I are going to this workshop, so I decided to interview them about it, and share that interview with you.

Please note: I am not being paid to tell you about this workshop. I’m going to it, and I think you might get value out of it too.

In this 32-minute interview with Jim and Zaina, they cover…

• Practical steps for growing spiritually in a relationship,
• How a relationship can go from being just a place a person gets his or her needs met to becoming a place where people grow together into their fulfillment and happiness,
• Why sharing feelings or your “truth” can sometimes turn into a fight or a session of complaining, and what to do about it,
• How the purpose of relationship communication is not just to get your point across, but to discover the next place inside of you that you need to transform to move even deeper into the relationship,
• The problem with thinking that your partner are the same person every day, and how who you partner is today asks new things of you… and how those new challenges can be catalysts for transformation,
• How Jim and Zaina “hold” each other during conflict, and avoid the major traps of “just listening” to your partner.
• How to get past the idea that “sooner or later all couples drift apart” or the other ideas that dull many relationships,
• How to listen “deeper” to what is upsetting your partner,
• The “subtle losses of heart” that happen in relationships, and how to overcome them,
• Good news about how a couple can set the intention to be ridiculously and outrageously happy together, and can keep that intention (and experience) alive through the bumps and challenges of the relationship,
• and more.

About their workshop:

Location: The workshop is happening in Auburn Massachusetts, USA. (By the way, Fawn and I are traveling from Madison, WI to this workshop, on the weekend before our wedding… We think it’s worth traveling to get to this workshop, and encourage you to think so, too.)

Date: Saturday and Sunday, July 26-27, 2008.

Price: Probably because this is the first time they’ve let this workshop, it is priced at only $150/person. (I think you can expect the price to go up dramatically in the future.)

Who can come: This workshop is open to people who are in a relationship, those who would like to be in one, or someone who is getting over a heartbreak or anyone else.

Next steps for you:

If you’d like to hear more from Jim, he has a free newsletter and many hours of free audio at his website http://howtowalkwithgod.com (Opens in a new window).

To find out more or sign up for the workshop, you can email Jim at james@howtowalkwithgod.com.

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And please feel free to comment on this post!