How Finding What You Love can Overcome Fear

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Oliver Kaufman

Have you ever thought about facing a fear of yours, but then never did?

Risks are easier to accept when we love what we’re striving for.

What stopped you? Were you OK with the fact that you didn’t face it?

Partly due to the glorification of courage and heroism in today’s culture, not facing our fears can cause us to feel guilty, or at the very least uncomfortable about our decisions. And yet, do you think that your decisions to avoid potential dangers really are that bad?

I mean, there’s a whole lot of good that can come from listening to your fear! You won’t perform dangerous stunts, you’ll be more cautious, and in most cases, you’ll increase your chances for survival.

Also, it’s important to think about all the fears you DO face on a day to day basis. If you drive, you’re engaging in a dangerous activity. Even if you’re balled up in your room unable to do anything because of fear, you still get up in the morning and risk another day of feeling terrible, right?

Fear acts as a barrier between us and something we want. It’s basically a barrier that tells us, “there may be risks”. There are several actions you can take to break down this barrier, such as:

Accept the risks
Learn more about the potential risk to see how real your fear is, or
Simply ignore the warning

Obviously, ignoring the warning is dangerous. Learning more about the potential risk can help a lot to alleviate fears that are based on misguided notions and incomplete evidence. And then of course, there’s accepting the risk.

What risks do you accept on a day to day basis? And which ones do you refuse to accept? Probably a lot – I mean, think about all the dangerous activities that you don’t do.

So what separates the risks you take from the ones you don’t?

If you’re like me, it’s all about what you care about. If something you really care about is at stake, you’ll take the risk, won’t you? Driving to work or to see a friend – you can handle that. But stuff like skydiving, bull riding… unless you love those activities, it just doesn’t make any sense doing it. Even getting close to a spider – what’s the point? You can always get someone else to take care of the spiders in your house.

Fear stops you from going for what you want. But if you don’t care enough about what you want, then you’ll have a much harder time getting past your fear. That’s the dynamic between fear and love: if you really love something, you’ll step past the risks much more easily.

So what’s the significance of this? Well, let’s say you’re having a lot of issues with fear, either now or some day in the future. And when thinking about the problem of these rampant fears, you can maybe remember a time when you WEREN’T afraid – maybe there was a time in your life when you’d take all kinds of risks, and it was much more joyful to be alive. “What went wrong?” the fearful you might ask. Well, maybe it’s not that you’ve turned into a coward, or a weakling, or are pathetic. Maybe all it has to do with is that you don’t care as much about the things you’re trying to accomplish.

Think about that for a second. If you tried to accomplish something you didn’t really care about, wouldn’t every barrier seem much more daunting, including your fear? Things that never held you back before might suddenly cause you to question your decisions and hold back.

Goals Worth Caring About

But why would anyone try to accomplish something they didn’t really care about? Maybe another fear, or a sense of obligation… or that insistence in their mind that they “really should” want something.

But sometimes, we just don’t want the thing we “should” want. Even though it’s the “normal” thing to want. And maybe not just “normal” in the societal sense like cars, marriage, college, or friends. Maybe we don’t really want the things that have always seemed “normal” for us, either. But as scary as our true feelings can be sometimes, we can’t really help how we feel. Maybe we can drag ourselves to the things we “should” want – but then, things become much more of a struggle.

So what are the solutions to the problem of living life as you don’t really want it? Here are a few:

Find out what you feel like doing. Even if it doesn’t make sense. Even if you’d rather go stick your head in a toilet than do the things you feel like doing, just spend some time being honest with yourself about your “crazy” feelings.
Reevaluate your goals. Why are you trying to accomplish each of them? What do you not like about them? Is there any way you can change your approach?
Look at your fears. Looking past the risks for a second, what potential, positive goals are waiting for you if you did take that risk? How much do you really care about those goals, and is there anything you can do to change them so that you’ll care more?

Of these, number one is probably the most important. Essentially, it entails giving a little more respect to your feelings, however crazy they seem on the surface. And that respect usually opens a door to being able to think more deeply about why you feel as you do, and get down to the layer where those feelings start to make more sense. And once your feelings make sense, you can start creating goals that make sense, too. And these new goals will have the added weight of your caring behind them, which can help carry you through any fear barrier.

If any of you are struggling with fear right now, I hope these thoughts were helpful to you. If not, or if you have any unanswered questions, drop me a comment on this post, or even an email.

Thanks for reading and take care,
-Oliver

Overcome Fear of Repeating your Mistakes
The Courage to Face Any Thought
Why You Should Bother to Accept Yourself
Beyond Morality: Beauty in the Ugliness

How to be an Honorable Person

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

You have honor in you, but often its voice is drowned out by desire’s intensity.

Now first, let me just say to everyone reading this article:

You already are.

You already are an honorable person! Or, rather, you have an honorable side to you.

If you’re reading this, you probably WANT to be honorable, too. That’s fine, but the side of you who wants it probably isn’t as honorable as your truly honorable side is.

Let me explain. When we want something, basically we’re saying, “I don’t like the way things are. I want something else.” And there’s nothing wrong with that! – It’s important to be partial about what we let into our lives and what we disallow.

But then why did I say it’s more dishonorable if you WANT to be honorable? It’s just because the difference between honor and desire is all a matter of perspective.

Where desire says: “I want things to be this way”, honor says: “I recognize things are this way, and I can respect that. I don’t need to change it. I can live with or without it. I’ll act given how things actually are.”

In fact, you might call my version of honor, “steadiness”. Staying strong, calm, composed.

Honor in Defeat

For example, say you just lost a game of some kind that you wanted to win. Desire is the force inside you that wants to lash out at your opponent, throw things, and come up with excuses for why you lost. Honor, on the other hand, can be seen in any thoughts that, despite you wanting to win, it’s OK that you lost. It’s not as big of a deal to let the game go.

That sounds nice and all, but when we’re feeling our desire to change something, it’s hard to see from our perspective of honor. It’s almost as if honor, as I personified it above, doesn’t make any sense. We just want what we want, and not having it feels bad.

But no matter how strong your desires are, honor doesn’t disappear. And it’s not that you have to destroy your desires or something to get honor to appear – no. You just need to find honor. Real, non-imaginary honor. And the way to do that is to peel back your desires one at a time.

Before I show you how to do that, let me first address the question of why it’s important to look for honor at all. Think of it this way: while desire is in turmoil, honor is, in the same situation, peaceful and steady. Desire is trying to be an agent of change, honor is being a stable witness to what is. Finding your honor can help you to realize how you can be at peace even amid the most tumultuous of times.

Let me show you how to do that, now.

Exercise: Find your honor.

In this exercise you will be looking for your honorable side in a situation where you usually are feeling desire.

Imagine an object of your desire. What is it? It can be a situation, a goal, a person, an inanimate object, anything.
Feel your desire for it, however strong. But do stay with the exercise.
In your imagination, see a version of yourself appear who’s feeling this desire. See them thrashing about, or drooling, or angry, or however they are.
If you feel more desire in you trying to express itself in a different way from the first (like planning on how best to achieve your ends), repeat step 2-3 for each of them.
See, in your imagination, as many of your desires as you can at once, the feelings and the way they’re expressed.
Do you feel your honorable side emerging? If not, try to identify your desire to be an honorable person, and then put it with all the other desiring fellows you’ve imagined.
Once you feel as though you’ve connected with the side of you who is honorable beneath all the desires, personify it, too. What does he or she think, say, feel, do? Just explore this imaginary honorable person in your mind.
If any other feelings crop up in you, put them in your imaginary space as well, and see what happens!

See? You are honorable after all! But you also have a lot of crazy desires. And just because you found your honor doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly become 100% honorable, or have cleared away your desire. But at least you’ve got some perspective now. And you have a connection to a side of you who stays calm when things aren’t going great. Maybe not getting what you want will be a little easier to tolerate now – who knows.

If you have trouble with this technique or understanding what I’m talking about, drop me a comment. Even if I don’t post a lot, I check the site regularly.

Thanks for reading, and, until next time,

-Oliver

Why it’s Hard to feel Happy

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

A lot depends on our perspective.

Allow me, if you will, to get straight to the point.

As I see it now, how you see the world depends on your perspective. Each perspective has a kind of energy to it – it could be happy, sorrowful, hyper, angry, honorable. There are many, many perspectives. We look at the world through the eyes of one or more perspectives at any given time, and they shape how we think, feel, and act.

But each perspective is limited, and only brings to it more of what it already is. Unhappy? Everything around you will probably bring you down further. Critical? Hardly anything will seem good enough. Happy? The world looks bright and cheerful.

So, which perspective should you listen to? How do you even “listen” to a perspective? Well, how are you feeling now? The answer to that question will likely show you the perspectives you think are being truthful in the current situation. Curious? You probably agree that reading this article is something worth being curious about. Agitated? Perhaps I’m not striking a cord.

Basically, you feel the perspectives that you, perhaps subconsciously, agree with.

This way of thinking about feelings might be confusing at first, but remember that it’s not the things around you that MAKE you unhappy, it’s only your unhappy perspective that’s coloring your view of life.

And hey, maybe the “unhappy” perspective is right sometimes. It’s not a good idea to be prejudice against certain perspectives.

But when you remain too close to a certain perspective, when you don’t question it, you might end up shutting out the other perspectives. Instead of flowing from one feeling to the next, you’re stuck with a perspective that just feels awful. However, you CAN get out for those slumps. You CAN be happy.

Let’s make it happen.

Exercise: Get out of a Slump

The following exercise is designed to get you feeling how you WANT to feel, or at least make you feel more at peace with the way you are feeling already.

How do you want to feel? Think of one word to describe it, like “Happy”.
Imagine a version of yourself who IS how you’d like to feel. They might not look like you, just imagine someone or something who represents the feeling you want.
Think about what your imaginary self would say to you right now. Maybe “oh it’s not so bad”. Or “come on let’s go have some fun!” Do you disagree with what it thinks? Why?
Can you come to some kind of agreement with this side of yourself? Try to work through your differences, or, at the very least, hear them out and everything they have to say.

Feel better? Remember that even if what a given perspective says isn’t true ALL the time, it might still have something valid to say. I hope this technique is something that will serve you during those times when you don’t feel good at all, and is a little something you can pack in your back pocket for emergencies.

All the best, and keep on the lookout for the wisdom of all the different perspectives inside of you!

-Oliver

Characters Within (could really be called “perspectives within”)
Move Beyond Your Dissatisfaction with Life
Find Yourself: A Quick Self-Discovery Activity
Wake Up! The Path of Self-Awareness

How to (Really) Keep Calm and Carry On

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

Sometimes, your stress just needs a time out. Observing your stress stops you from engaging with it and creating even more stress.

When we get severely stressed out, for all kinds of reasons, we can get into a mode where nearly everything pushes our buttons – other people, our own thoughts, what we imagine might happen, or what we think might be true. At such times, it’s like the only thing we want is to run away, escape, and lash out at anything that disturbs us.

Now responding to this situation can be tricky indeed, because our “Stressed Self”, as I’ll call it, reacts to all kinds of things. If we treat this side of ourselves as something rational, that has rational concerns that need to be addressed, we’ll end up getting drawn into trying to solve every one of its irrational ways of thinking about things. And we’ll try to do it so quickly that it will be impossible to do a thorough job of it. We might end up getting worried, cautious, or even start caving in to the demands of our Stressed Self.

So what’s the alternative?

Don’t react. Instead of trying to fix what you’re stressed about, just observe your stress while going about things as if you were a separate entity. If you imagined your stressed side as a separate person, they might curse at you, yell, tear out their hair, scream in terror, or punch a wall. But you don’t have to react to it. Be a witness to your stress rather than a victim of it. This way, even while a part of yourself is bouncing off the walls, you can remain calm. Peaceful.

There really is some truth to this.

Of course, this state can be difficult to maintain because you have to expend energy to imagine your stressed side as something separate. But I’ve observed that if you remain solid, steady, and peaceful for long enough, your stressed side will begin to calm down. Just don’t speak to it. Don’t engage it. Or, if you do, stop as soon as you realize what you’re doing.

What is “engaging with it”? Let’s say your stressed side wants to pound its fists angrily on the table. If you think “Stop it!”, that’s engaging, and it will get more enraged at you than before. If you let it imagine pounding the table while you, physically, go about your business, thinking nothing to try and control it, then your stressed side will be much more likely to calm down. In other words, “engaging” is when you respond to your stress and try to MAKE IT calm down by force of will or reasoning with it. Experiment with both methods of trying to calm down and you’ll see what I mean. (Or maybe find something I didn’t!)

Exercise: Remaining Calm

Time to de-stress. For this exercise you will try for yourself to observe stress and let it calm down on its own. Please give this a try if you get stressed a lot, or happen to be stressed right now!

Imagine a side of yourself who is “stressed”. In your mind’s eye, see him or her expressing all of the stress inside you – screaming, acting violent, breathing hard, yelling at you, whatever it might do.
Don’t do anything to try and stop it. Just observe yourself expressing your stress. It may be hard to watch, and highly uncomfortable, but just stay strong.
Your stressed self might try interacting (in your imagination) with other people. Don’t let it. Isolate it, or re-imagine it in a room with only silent people who don’t react to it. When I did this, I had the image of a Griffin in my head, one who silently preened its wings and watched my stressed self without doing a thing.
Be patient, and only act when YOU want to, not when your stress wants you to. That way, you can remain peaceful.

As I’m writing this, I’m still sustaining this exercise. My stressed side is a little less stressed, but still sparks up at various things. Once I see this to some kind of more thorough conclusion, I’ll update this post. But for now, the above technique seems to be helping my composure A LOT.

Until next time (whenever that might be!),

-Oliver

The Courage to Face Any Thought
Respect Your Moodiness
Creative Visualization (the technique I used to address my stressed state and figure this out)

The Natural Self and the Intellect

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

Our intellects tend to demand a lot out of our natural selves. But we can listen to our natural selves more, too, as well as question the reasoning behind our intellect’s actions.

As we’ve seen before, there’s a difference between the way you actually are and the way you want to be. One of the most common ways that this affects our everyday lives is in the difference between our natural self and our intellect.

The natural self is like a big blob of feelings. It doesn’t speak to us in words (thoughts), but in a flow of feelings. When we’re operating purely from this side our selves, this is usually called “the flow”.

Our intellect on the other hand has many ideas about what we should or need to do, regardless of what our feelings say. It treats our natural selves kind of like a pet, who sometimes needs its leash pulled.

We’ve all felt this difference before. When the alarm clock rings and we don’t want to get up, but force ourselves, our intellect is pulling our natural selves in a different direction. When we get scared, but force ourselves to do something anyway, same thing. Same thing if we smile even when we’re upset inside – our intellect tells us that we should smile, and we do.

But being forced to do things wears the natural self down. What it really longs for is to feel free – to do what it wants, and to follow its feelings. But it also recognizes that there’s more to life that it’s not considering, and will willingly bend to the demands of the intellect. Just like when we force ourselves to wake up and go somewhere that, if we don’t go, we think there will be bad consequences.

I mean, doesn’t it seem like it’s more often than not that our natural self gets in the way of our ability to get things done? I mean, man, wouldn’t it be good if sleep didn’t exist, or going to the bathroom, or eating – then we could really get some things done!

But those things do exist. So rather than asking how we can more efficiently do the things that we unfortunately, being human have to do (although some might argue!), I think there’s a better question: how do we form a better relationship with our natural selves?

On Being Natural (Again)

I mean, as a kid, didn’t you enjoy the things your natural self wanted to do? Like play, or nap, or wander around aimlessly with no reason at all to it. Our intellects didn’t seem to force us around so much back then! But then we heard things like “you need to earn a living”, or “real men don’t cry”, or any number of other things that scared us away from being our natural selves. That was my experience, at least. Pretty soon I was thrust into a world of thoughts and demands that didn’t make any sense, and I did my best to cope – changing my lifestyle bit by bit with each new piece of information.

Isn’t the whole idea of vacation, in a way, just a chance to get back to our natural selves for a while? To take a break from the waking up when we don’t want to, working when we don’t want to, doing activities when we don’t want to, etc? Not that we always don’t want to – but enough times of forcing ourselves to do things really wears us out.

The first step to reconnecting with your natural self is to tell your intellect (the one saying what you need to and should do) to step aside for aside for a moment, and then to listen. Listen to your natural self. Your natural self speaks in feelings and images, so you need to listen carefully. What does it want? What does it need? What kind of things trouble it? Just be patient and stay with yourself. Your natural side might not even know how to respond. Reconnect with it, so it knows that it has a friend who won’t try to always demand things out of it all the time.

Another thing you can do that’s pretty fun is to let your natural self “take charge” for a while. What that means is to let your natural self completely take over your physical body for a while, to see how it acts, what kinds of things it’s drawn to, how it feels, etc. Don’t worry, it’s easy to stop it if it gets out of hand. The biggest change that I noticed is that you become extremely sensitive and quiet. It also stays in the feelings you normally don’t like, such as sadness. But the upside is that when you’re in this state and happy, you’ll know you’re genuinely happy.

That’s the benefit, after all, of being natural. You feel genuine, like you’re really doing, moment-to-moment, what you really want to do. You attend to your needs, rather than your ideas.

Lastly, you can talk with your intellect. Ask him about why he’s so demanding on certain issues, and help him to understand that you want your natural self to help get what they want, too. You can also be a mediator, of sorts, working between the both of them on the issues where your natural self is most torn away from what it really wants.

In the end, this article is about caring for your natural self. To recap, here are some ways you can do this:

Get to know your natural self. Ask those who have a problem with it to step aside, and talk with it directly. Listening is key.
Let your natural self take charge for a while. Notice how it feels.
Get to know your intellect. Why is it so demanding? What are its priorities?
Lastly, mediate the conflicts between your natural self and intellect. Listen to both sides and look for a reasonable solution.

Additional Exercise: Meet your Natural Self

Although I talk a lot about connecting with your natural self, it can be confusing how to go about doing that. The following exercise aims to help you do that. Follow along in your head or write the results of each step down.

Think of a recent time when you forced yourself to do something you didn’t really want to do. (Example: I forced myself to wake up, rather than sleep in.)
Imagine that the same situation is happening again right now. Try to choose what you really want to do instead. What gets in your way?
This inner voice is likely your intellect, telling you what you should be doing. It might be a little different from what I’ve been talking about. That’s ok. Imagine the voice coming from an imaginary person. What do they look like?
Now think about the part of you who just naturally wants to sleep in. What do they look like?
Since last time the intellect had their way, try to find out what this other, natural side of you wants, and why? You may have a hard time understanding this, but that’s ok – you can always feel what it’s trying to communicate, then ask it if your understanding is correct. Do your best to understand it better.
Once you feel that you know more now than you did last time, and have a better handle on the situation, return to the moment.

Now, while the situation you just went through was a re-imagining, hopefully it helped you to not only prepare for the next, real version of that situation, but strengthened your connection with your natural self as well. You might just have found out how beautiful it really is.

That’s all for now! Have fun out there.
-Oliver

P.S. I know this is the first post in three weeks or so, but I’ve had nothing to post. It’s not that I haven’t gone through anything, it’s that I still don’t understand a lot of what I’m going through. Just thought I’d let those of you who follow my blog know – I only post when I’ve got clarity on something, and when I feel like doing it. Thanks for hanging with me, and remember to subscribe if you want updates when actual new posts come out.

Beyond Morality: Beauty in the Ugliness
Why You Should Bother to Accept Yourself
Respect Your Moodiness
Learning to Comfort a Person who Feels Sad
Find Your Unconditional Kindness, Feel Self-Acceptance

The Deep Darkness of Desire

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

Like a black hole, Desire tries to consume and destroy what makes it uncomfortable, including your own willpower! Stumbled across him while doing creative visualization.

Loneliness, fear, sorrow… being doubted, questioned, mistrusted, rejected… in pain, powerless, dead inside…. tragedy… loss… What do you think about these feelings?

For most of us, myself included, we’d rather not feel these things. And since certain circumstances bring out these feelings in us, it’s only natural to want to change our circumstances so that we have to feel these things as little as possible.

Yet when we’re not willing to feel certain things, we ignore ourselves during our times of greatest need. Our desire to not feel something doesn’t show us how, in our pursuit of something, we trample over our own spirit, the part of ourselves to whom it feels natural to feel those ways. All Desire can see is the goal.

Desire, to me, is the embodiment of ‘the ends justify the means’.

The spirit of desire itself – it longs for something so much that it stomps all over everything in its path. And what does it want? It’s that part of you that wants circumstances to be exactly as it wants them to be, and feels violent towards anything that doesn’t fit its desired image. Screw the loneliness! Screw the despair, the agitation, and the doubt!

And yet, when you feel any of those ‘bad’ feelings, it’s just your spirit crying out for help. During those tough times in life, that’s when your own spirit needs the most love from your conscious mind.

But we don’t know how to love ourselves during such tough times. Trying to is intimidating, strange, and most of all, uncomfortable. I mean, will that doubtful side of you ever just shut up and stop being doubtful? Can your despairing side just suck it up already?

So it feels like our spirit of desire lies in wait until that time when we have finally learned our lesson of how to love ourselves, completely, in every horrible circumstance we can possibly imagine. Sounds fun, huh? But perhaps knowing that this allows us to better protect our spirit from being trampled can give us the perspective we need to move forward.

Besides, you can’t just go kill Desire. I tried that. All Desire will do is laugh and accuse you of hypocrisy, because all you’re doing is desiring to kill something seen as negative, which is the exact same thing Desire does.

And a Warning: I’m not recommending you go out and try to put yourself in all sorts of uncomfortable circumstances arbitrarily either. There’s plenty in you that doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable on purpose, I’d wager.

The important thing to keep in mind is the relationship between love and desire. Desire tries to kill everything in its path between it and what it likes. Love takes the time to truly understand what’s going on, and care for you in times of trial. So when you find yourself in one of those circumstances where you’d rather just not be in it, rather than running from the circumstance, instead look for a way to help yourself through it.

And yet, if a side of you feels angry or frustrated, and doesn’t have the patience to be loving, sometimes it’s overpowering! And that’s OK – just work with what you can handle without suppressing or restricting yourself. Or heck, go talk to Desire itself and see what it wants to do. Then you can think from outside its perspective.

But, besides your own spirit, think of all the stuff Desire tries to get you to do! When someone makes a mistake, yell at them! When life hands you a traffic jam on the way to work, flip off reality itself! When something annoys you, destroy it!

Love on the other hand… when someone makes a mistake, it’s concerned about the other person’s insecurities and if they feel fine. If there’s a traffic jam, it remains calm. When something annoys you, it wants to help you in your annoyance to better understand why it did annoy you.

But what do we listen to?

Anyway, rather than hear me blabber on about it, let’s try an activity to help you pinpoint the voice of Desire and see what lies beyond it.

Go Beyond the Voice of Desire

In the following exercise you’ll be shifting from not wanting a situation, to wanting a solution to the real issue. In the process you’ll uncover what the real issue is, and get some ideas on how to solve it. Let’s begin!

Think of a situation that you would really like to avoid getting into. Write this at the top of the page. (example: clipping my toenails)
How would this situation make you feel? Write that next. (example: bored, impatient, like I’m wasting time with mundane stuff)
Why does it make you feel this way? Write your answer on the next line. (example: because I don’t feel fulfilled, so any extra waste of time is disappointing to me. I feel like I’m going in the wrong direction.)
Is there anything you can do about that? Write down all ideas. If nothing comes to you, write that down too. (example: I could explore some new directions, I could not clip my toenails (hah… jk) … honestly I don’t know what to do.)
Next, write “I desire to not be_[insert situation here]_”. (example: I desire to not be clipping my toenails.)
Now below that, write the real issue that you now know from asking yourself why the situation makes you feel the way it does. (example: I feel unfulfilled and like I’m wasting time.)
Now, if you really want to put yourself in a positive mindset, stick “solving my issue” on your todo list! You already got a head start by writing some ideas down, and now your mind will probably already be going, trying to find the way to solve the problem. You can come back to the real issue at any time.

As you can see, you didn’t actually change the situation. For instance, in my example, I didn’t want to really stop clipping my toenails. But I did want to be more fulfilled. I just didn’t know how. But that’s OK! I can learn as I go – at least I have a better grasp of what I’d like to learn: living a fulfilling life.

It’s easy to see the things that make us feel bad. It’s a little bit harder to grasp why. Desire just fixates on the image of the things that make us feel bad being gone, one way or another. But these bad feelings reveal something about ourselves, hidden issues that we might not know were there, and often we don’t even know how to solve. What might be waiting for us if we solve them? There’s only one way to find out!

Let’s enjoy it, shall we? : )

-Oliver

Overcome Fear of Repeating your Mistakes

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

Sometimes, your own distrust attacks you with all kinds of arguments. Fight back!

Yeah, we’ve made mistakes in our past. Yeah, we’d like to not be the “kind of person” to make those mistakes again. We’d be very glad to be past it.

But of course, how will we know that we won’t? How will we know that, when the time comes, we’ll make the right choices, if we’ve made the wrong ones in the past?

The thing is, you have intentions – those intentions are what cause you to act as you do. Now let’s say you’ve had an intention in the past that was “to make so and so’s life terrible”, and now, looking back, you don’t like that intention of yours. How can you live peacefully, knowing you once, impulsively, made that your intention and acted upon it?

Before you make any choice, there is a period, however brief, of consideration. And simply disliking how you acted that “one time long ago when you mistreated someone” can influence you and turn you in a different direction than the path you would’ve chosen otherwise.

This does not mean that the thought of mistreating someone does not enter into your head. It might. But ultimately, how you decide is not just based on the whims of that one nasty side of yourself. Your memory of your regretted actions also play into it.

What this means is that just because you made a mistake in the past doesn’t mean that you will make that same mistake again. Simply having lived the consequences and aftermath of your choices will affect your choices for the future.

No, you don’t know what choices you WILL make, but heck, if you later find out that those yet-to-be-made choices were “bad”, you’ll make new choices after that which will reflect your new perspective.

So why is it a problem to worry about the mistakes you haven’t made yet? Because then you’ll be constantly fearful around certain life issues. If you doubt your ability to make choices, you’ll be paralyzed! You’re constantly making choices, because you’re constantly facing new situations. Life is one big ever-changing situation. Do you want to be constantly cutting yourself down because you’re not sure if you’ll make a bad choice in some unknown future?

Really, experience has an effect on you – so let’s take a look at proving to ourselves that this is the case.

Try it Out – Let go of a Past Mistake

The following exercise is designed to help you come to terms with your current ability to handle past situations that you handled badly. You’ll go back to a mistake and imagine yourself dealing with the situation given everything you know now. Write down every step or just think through it.

Think of mistake you made in the past, something you would not consciously choose today. Something you vividly remember.
Replay the event: If confronted with the same situation today, right this very second, with your new perspective and all your experiences (including everything to do with the incident!), how would you respond? This is pretend, but try to be as realistic as possible.
Do you see how knowing what has happened in the past affects your actions? What did you do differently?
If you didn’t do differently, why? What’s holding you back from acting in the way you’d like to?
You know all those worries you had about what you might do in the future? Show that worried side of you the results of this activity, challenge its fears of your future actions. This is evidence for how you will act. Do your worries still have complaints?
If you still doubt yourself, be realistic – you don’t know how you’d act. Some behaviors become habits you just can’t seem to shake. BUT, what do you you think you’d do if something similar DID happen again? Would you be willing to learn from that mistake as well? Are you willing to look at the root cause of your habits?

Hopefully now you’re more at peace with the decisions you haven’t made yet. If not, just keep working through your worry’s complaints until you are. Be truthful, strong, and persistent. Once that worried side feels your way of thinking is good enough, it’ll back down. Good luck,

-Oliver

Find your Curiosity and Move Past Failure

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

On any journey, the way you imagined might not be the one you need to take. Curiosity can get you looking for the right way again.

When you’re trying to accomplish a goal, oftentimes, your own frustration with not having accomplished a goal can get in your way. We can be so desperate to get to our goal that we want to have the quickest way forward.

Here’s the problem with that: we imagine our strategy for getting to our goal. If imagining a goal was enough to get there, then life would be super easy, right? But achieving anything is not that simple. Our imagined approach is not enough to achieve the results we want.

Remember this quote from Thomas Edison?:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

If imagining his light-bulb were enough, he would have created it immediately. The same for any of the goals you strive for. So… so what?

You need to be clear with yourself: any of the ideas you come up with to accomplish ANYTHING are just that – ideas. Your strategy is not infallible, you could be totally wrong.

The point is, when you’re desparate, you want your ideas to work. Those ideas are the best shot you have, after all! But no matter what path you’ve imagined for yourself, if you stay fixated on your imagined path, then you’ll ignore your intuition, calling you in a new direction.

Turn Failure into Success

Now I’m not saying you will succeed if you hang on every word I’m about to say. Goodness knows my life is full of problems I still have no idea how to solve, and which bother me. But after working through the conflict I had between Desperation and Idea-Creation today, I know of one thing that can calm down the impulse to suffer from failure:

Curiosity.

Oh yeah big surprise because of my title, right? The point is that when you run into a dead end, curiosity is that voice that says, “OK, what’s another way?” Success (aka when you accomplish a goal) doesn’t just happen when you have the right strategy. Sometimes you could have the wrong strategy entirely! But when you set out towards your goal, first you go towards your first idea for achieving it.

You could be told by a vague sense of moving in the wrong direction, or by coming face-to-face with a brick wall, but what will you do when you start to lose confidence in your idea? Stomp your feet, and get aggitated, spend time thrashing about in your longing for a goal? I’m not demeaning those feelings – it can remind you why you started off in the first place. But remember: your curiosity allows you to move forward.

What do I mean by curiosity? I mean, when you get a feeling that a different direction, or new idea might better serve you, and you wish to explore it. That’s curiosity. You don’t always have to wait until you’re screaming in frustration – oftentimes a slight feeling of agitation or boredom can tell you “It’s just not working”. During those times, curiosity will most likely pipe in and ask you “well, what else might work?”

Just remember: Don’t let your frustration for not having accomplished a goal shut down your willingness to explore new options for achieving it. Yeah, it might take longer than anticipated, but none of us really know how long it will take to accomplish our goals in the first place! We can make good guesses, but none of us really know.

Exercise for Reevaluating a Goal

So, let’s try it out! No use reading a well-meaning article without something to show for it, right? The following exercise aims to help you look at the steps you’ve imagined for achieving a goal, and opening yourself up to considering other options that might serve you better.

Think of a goal that you’ve been having a difficult time with recently. It could be to solve a problem, or accomplish a dream. Preferably something that frustrates you. Write down the goal at the top of the page.
Next, list out all the steps you need to take towards your goal, in approximate order.
Put a big arrow pointing towards that list and write “These are imaginary” in big letters. : )
Next, go through the list and rate each item on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being “I feel like this idea is working perfectly”, 1 being “This idea has failed to produce ANY results”.
For the ones that don’t seem to be producing the results you want, think over what other options there might be, and write these down next to you list or wherever it’ll fit. Writing down “I don’t know” also works : )

Hopefully now your curiosity has the fuel it needs to start exploring some new directions in achieving your goal. If not, maybe you need to revalute why you’re seeking that goal in the first place, and if you want to modify or drop it entirely. It’s up to you!

So for all you goal-seekers out there, I hope this helps to get you out of any slumps you might be experiencing, and onward towards what you long for. Bye for now,

-Oliver

The Utility and Fun of Not Knowing

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

There are so many things you don’t really know. But hey, that makes life more of an adventure!

“God”, “Love”, “Spirituality”, “Enlightenment” – Do you really know what these words mean? I sure don’t.

“Food”, “Toy”, “Chair”, “Sky” – Maybe you know what these mean? I sure don’t.

Now, for any of the words above I could tell you what they approximately mean to me, right now, or what I think other people usually mean when they say them. But I don’t really know what they mean. Every word means something different to everyone else, and, at least for me, even personal definitions can change by the day, even the moment. Even just the mood you’re in can determine what meaning you attribute to things. Think of all the countless poems about roses. We don’t even know what things will mean to us the next instant. So, can you see how fruitless it is to try and pin down the meaning of any word? Think of all the words that have multiple meanings in the dictionary. The word “set” has 119 different definitions!

But I’m not here to talk about words – I’m here to talk about not knowing.

Yeah I’m sure you’ve heard quotes like this one:

“I know one thing, that I know nothing” – Socrates

And maybe you think by repeating it to yourself you’ll know what Socrates knew. It sure is tempting, isn’t it. Or maybe you think Socrates is wrong, and you’re kinda pissed at how glorified this one phrase of his is.

Ok, maybe it makes no sense at this time to just go around saying “I know nothing” – it would just amount to trying to convince one’s self. You know lots of things, right? Like the fact that you’re reading this article right now. What else do you know?

Now, for any of the things that come to mind, if you could comfortably restate it as “I believe (insert thing you just thought you knew in here)”, then maybe it’s important to take a look at what you actually know, versus the things you only think you know.

It’s hard to keep track of the things we only think we know, however. After all, we think we know them, how the heck are we supposed to find the things we don’t know to begin with? And why look for them in the first place?

Beliefs and the Conceptual Bridge

Well, let’s first take a look at how we come up with false beliefs in the first place. Or, perhaps, one way.

When we think up a goal, we don’t know how to get there.

In general, when we think of a goal we desire, we’d like to be assisted by something that can reassure us we can get to that goal. For instance, living a peaceful, beautiful life with a minimal amount of pain. Setting off in life, we might not know much at all about how to get there. How the heck do we have a peaceful, beautiful life? Pssh, I bet as a child you knew very very little about how to make that happen.

Our conceptual bridge of ideas.

But then came the ideas. Ideas, from friends, family, books, or maybe your own reasoning. Nevermind if they were right or wrong, you could utilize these ideas to form a conceptual bridge from the starting place to the desired end. A strategy. Maybe you thought that in order to live a peaceful beautiful life, you’ve got to be a good person, do good things. Help others, be unselfish, look at lots of inspirational quotes online, that sort of thing.

Ok, so maybe the strategy worked.Maybe right now you’re living a peaceful, beautiful life. Maybe not. But if you were living a peaceful life, think about how you might feel towards all those ideas that got you to that goal. You might be pretty inclined to take them as the truth, right? And as long as you keep getting what you want, for the most part, what’s the point in questioning those ideas? You’ll keep being good, do good things, help others, etc. And your life will still be peaceful, right?

Questioning your own ideas isn’t as scary as it might seem.

Now what? Am I coming to break up your party by questioning whether or not the ideas that got and continue to get you to your goal are true? Nah – if my example is the case, I’m glad stuff is working out for you. But you’ve got to wonder – do you really need to be good to live a peaceful, beautiful life? And unselfish? Maybe you do – but you don’t really know it.

You don’t know if you need to follow your strategy to get what you want. There could be other ways. Besides, if you just stick to one strategy, you’re limiting yourself! Maybe you don’t JUST have to “be good” – maybe “being good” feels restricted sometimes, and as much as you’d like peace, you’d also like to feel free! And yeah, you may have come to rely on “being good” to get you peace (continuing the example), but by questioning it, you don’t need to feel like your peace is threatened. After all, you already know a way to feel the peace! But by exploring the possibilities, and looking for the truth of your assumptions, you can free up some more space inside yourself. Perhaps you could be free and peaceful. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

You don’t need to be afraid to want more than one thing. You can want everything! Just explore the conflicts that come up as a result, work through them, find the truth. Change course as needed. Remember that those inner conflicts are gifts, allowing you to explore having more than what you already do.

But if you want something so much, repeatedly, that you’re unwilling to question your strategy for getting it, you’ll severely limit your ability to have more. Maybe you’ll have peace, but no freedom. Sounds pretty disappointing to me.

Why it’s important to realize it when you don’t know

All this being said, I’m sure there are lots of things you can think of that you, if you were being honest about it, might suspect are true, but you aren’t totally sure. You believe it. Those are the things that can stop you if you aren’t willing to admit the truth: You don’t know if your belief is true or false.

And that’s ok! Because if your belief is false, it means there’s a greater truth you don’t know about yet. And isn’t that exciting? I mean, the unknown is kind of fun. For instance, I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, or even what I’ll write for my next paragraph. I don’t know what I’ll be hungry for dinner, how I’ll feel in a minute, or even what I’ll do about my own feelings! I can have lots of suspicions about it, but those are just ideas.

And ideas can be a good thing. Our ability to think, imagine, and consider the possibilities enables us to grasp at a way forward towards a goal we might not otherwise be able to reach. Whether or not the goal is worthwhile is another matter, but all the same, ideas help us.

However… if we want the goal so bad that we lean completely on our ideas to take us there, then we’re not showing a willingness to receive the real results, ones we might not like. We get “tunnel vision”, only looking at the goal instead of how to sort through all the things that pop up where we are now.

I’m not saying a lack of willingness is bad, either. Maybe we don’t want to get caught up, bogged down in all the mundane details of a situation. But at least consider that your own “tunnel vision” (which I get all the time, by the way), is being created by your fear of not getting to the goal you want. There’s lots of stuff along the way, and if you don’t pay attention to it, well how are you going to move on to the next step? Ideas may give us possibilities, but reality gives us feedback. Take in the feedback! It also helps you : )

But admitting that we really don’t know something can be very useful. Like with any recognition of the truth, it can help us to reassess the situation, and figure out how we’d like to respond to it. Maybe you don’t know what that response will bring, but do you really need to know if a strategy will work before you implement it? No – in fact, you can’t know! In that case, the real question is, what will you do when your strategy doesn’t work? What happens when your ideas fail to get you what you want? Uh oh, isn’t this another strategy? : P

So how do you respond when things don’t go your way? Personally, I get very frustrated, most of the time. But later I might reconsider how to handle it more peacefully. There’s lots of ways to handle things, and different sides of you handle things in very different ways. What’s the best way to handle things? I don’t know. <—-There’s another one!

See? By admiting “I don’t know”, I don’t have to posture myself and defend what I know deep down I don’t really know. Feels kinda nice. It takes the pressure off.

And if anyone reading this gets angry at me because I seem to know about this seemingly important issue before they did, just remember: I may disagree with the things I say here by tomorrow. I’m just sharing my thoughts – I’m not gonna make some kind of all-or-nothing stand with them. Aka don’t be so mean about it. (Ha – how pathetic does that seem?) But if what I talked about sparked some thoughts in you, if you found some value in it, I’m glad. And if you completely disagree with me about things, I’m also glad. Well not quite as glad. I don’t want to appear like some kind of wannabe Socrates. I’m just me. Like you just want to be you (probably). We’ve all got our imperfections, the things we’re unable to do, and all the things we don’t know.

So let’s remember that, and learn to laugh at our own steadfast dedication to standing by the things we don’t really know. It can get so darn serious sometimes, compadres. Talk to you all later (most likely),

-Oliver

Bonus Activity – Question a False Belief

So you want to find one of those buggers, huh? Let’s get to it.

Think of something you strongly suspect is true and want to be true, but you’re not totally sure if it is. Write it down.
Next, write down what life would be like if the thing you think is true is actually not true.
Why do you want it to be true? What goal is this belief a part of? Write down whatever it might be – it could be a fear, it could be to fit in, it could be because you want to justify the way you’re currently living. Just be honest and put down any and all reasons that come up. If you don’t care if it’s true or not, start back at step 1!
How else could you address what this belief currently addresses? For instance, if you want to justify yourself, maybe you need to search for the truth of your motivations so you can feel more at peace with them. Treat yourself gently my friend. You don’t need to change everything at once, or blindly. Do what feels right. Also, remember that just because something isn’t true, doesn’t mean its opposite is.
At the end of it, can you be more at peace with not really knowing what you strongly suspect? If so, I hope you feel more relaxed because of it!

That’s all for now. Take care everybody.

What do you truly long for? Separating Goals and Purpose
Fear List
Overcoming Self-Deceit, continued
The Malcontents
Mind Chatter

Beyond Morality: Beauty in the Ugliness

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Oliver Kaufman

An image of what I saw in creative visualization. This large, black blog was suffering, imprisoned in an electric fence. This “moral” guy (aka the ego) had him imprisoned, and had lots of idols on the walls, like a Buddha statue. I freed the blob and shattered all the statues.

I don’t know what to say. In fact, I’m not sure I even want to post anything. But I still have something to share today, and I’d be a fool not to. Ok, maybe not a fool. I’d just be me, but I’m going to share it anyway.

Sometimes, we get so invested in becoming good by our definition of it that we ignore our own suffering. We struggle and strive for an ideal that we forget ourselves, in all our darkness, moodiness, suffering, desires, insecurities and fears. When we desire something intensely that we don’t have instead of tending what is within us, it can be like putting ourselves in a cage. We want to become not-ourselves. We want to transform ourselves into only that which is good, rather than seeing the beauty in the real, untransformed us.

Yeah, the beauty in the ugly, suffering, struggling, fearful, doubtful, unclear, unintelligent, weak, vulnerable part of ourselves. That part of ourselves that’s like a big, black blob writhing in pain. It’s been guilted, shamed, abused, ignored, shunned, denied, and blamed. We might think, at such times, we’re doing the right thing by clinging to our false idols of the “right way”, but you know what, every idol is just a static idea inside the mind, like a statue. And statues can be shattered. Putting away those idols and tending to what’s real is not about “enlightenment”, “becoming better”, or “uncovering the truth”. It’s just simple kindness. Self-kindness. And the recognition that our moral, religious, or philosophical aspirations may just be an excuse to run away from what we’re really feeling.

We need to learn to welcome our own ugliness back into our circle of friendship. Back to a place of kindness where it can find some rest, and the freedom to be as it is. There’s always the impulse to change things inside ourselves we find disgusting. But when we see that our idea of how that side of ourselves should change is extremely limited, we can grasp our own abuse of ourselves. Rather than caring for how we really feel, we try to change and fix. Make it “moral”. Make it “good”.

Remember: even the side of you who feels ugliest to you has its own beauty. Just look for it. Instead of causing suffering by trying to change it, relieve suffering by freeing it. Don’t you want to relieve your own suffering? You can. But if you think there’s a step-by-step process to it, you’re wrong. You must feel your way to it. Feel the suffering, feel your own impulse to ignore, control, and diminish it. When you feel the situation within you, whatever it might be, as it really is (to the best of your ability), your heart will guide you.

You don’t need to figure out what’s good or bad before you get somewhere. Doing the right thing doesn’t follow a plan. It emerges from your feelings. So follow what you feel to take you towards the right course of action. It will show itself at the right time.

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