Stress can hurt you in any imaginable ways possible. To relieve your stress, you'll have to relax and breath yourself out if it. It's nonsense, I know. Keep reading.
If you are reading this, then I have to congratulate you. The reason I congratulate you is because your stress has declared loud and clear that you are alive. Your stress is your way of expressing that you are someone full of life, and struggling against the forces of pressure around you, even though you are dealing with it negatively (which is not always a bad thing). Even though that is so, we still have to manage it, because too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. However, before we begin to discuss the management of your struggling, first we'll begin by appreciating the fact that you have any will power left in you to struggle at all. If you didn't struggle with your will power, then you wouldn't feel stress, and as a result, you wouldn't even get a chance to read my writings, because you would've given up long ago.
In order to manage your stress, you have to first understand the components and the nature of stress. If you don't, then it will be very difficult to get rid of it, because it's analogous to searching for a tattoo that's implanted onto your brain.
Stress itself is not good or evil. I'm sure you have heard that before. Stress is literally struggling. Struggling is the fight between right and wrong, good and evil, strong and weak, win and loss. Due to the nature of stress, there are negative and positive parts to stress that greatly influences you. Even though the intention of feeling stress might be a good thing, the nature of stress is still a force of negativity.
Negativity is sharp, cold, heavy, straightforward, focused, and downward moving in nature. This is the form of energy we constantly put into use just in case we are being too lax and vulnerable. The advantage of negativity is that it sharpens and focuses your mind, developing your intelligence. Its nature drives you to search for answers. It is the reason to get excited about something by narrowing your focus on your goals, similar to shooting a precise arrow at
your target. This part of us exists, because we all desire to feel gain in spite of the odds stacked against us. However, the disadvantage it brings is that it damages our body causing dangerous health conditions due to its heavy, and congealing effects.
On the other hand, staying positive without any stress also has its advantages and disadvantages. Positiveness is light, open, bright, outward spreading, upward moving, random, and flexible by nature. This form of energy is nourishing for our bodies, and reconnects our sense of self, developing good health and connection with others. The disadvantage of positiveness is that it causes foggy minds, loss of focus and loss of concentration. It actually damages intelligence as an end result.
The main principle in managing stress is to balance your positive and negative feelings you have for anything. Since stress is negative in nature, then your job is to focus on staying positive. It's similar to flying on an airplane. Stress is gravity, which can only pull you down. Staying positive is staying airborne on the airplane. However, don't be too positive, because that also does damage to you. Your intelligence will decline, and you won't be able to function anymore if you follow the other extreme. In order to adhere to the balancing principle stated earlier, you will have to follow what is presented to you below.
In order to balance the positive and negative forces in your body, first you have to be able to measure your body's level of positiveness and negativity. In order to be able to achieve this, you will have to have your mind and body synchronize. An indication of success in terms of achieving mind and body synchronization is your level of control over your body's level of vitality and composure. The more synchronization you achieve, the more you control the health condition of your body, and it's ability to withstand pressure. Your body is not a simple vehicle of your will, even though we all like treat it so. It's another form of your mind. You are the supreme being that rules over the universe known as your body. If you devote plenty of love and good direction to your body, then it would respond to you exactly the way you dictate it. If you can not do so, then there are only two possible reasons that can be hindering your progress. First reason is that you are already dead. Since you are dead, then your body can obviously no longer synchronize with your mind. Second reason is that your emotions are not coordinating with your thoughts. This is caused by excruciating pain in your past. When you are in pain, you try to forget it, and ignore so as to not suffer any more than you already have. However, this method of handling your problem will comes with a side effect. The more you use your logic to suppress your negative feelings, the less positive emotions you will retain from then on, because positiveness can't exist without negativity. The two parts of us and this world are a contrast and can't exist without one another. Think back to a point your past in which you were much happier, and innocent, yet more vulnerable.
Once you are more aware of the positive and negative states of your body, then you are ready to un-knot yourself. As stated earlier, the nature of stress is negative. Negativity has concentrating effects, which helps you focus. If you are stressed unnecessarily and too often then you will form concentrated energy knots in your body which has very strong side effects. These side effects can be pain, diseases, and eventually cancer. The knots can not be detected by technology, but by the time it is detectable, it is already too late. These knots form under your direct command. It is never the fault of anything outside of your body. Be aware of the concentrations of these knots in your body and visualize them cooling down, and spreading out like a water wave all over your body. Utilize deep, consistent and complete breathing as a guide, and your thoughts as a goal. Remember to un-knot yourself everyday.
Once you learn how to un knot yourself, it's time to stabilize your techniques as specific comfort pockets. We form comfort pockets all the time, but concentrating as a group is more important for your purpose. comfort pocket is your perception of who you are in this world. Everybody forms one to make sense of everything and to feel safe. I'll give you two examples for this. Lets say you have a comfort pocket for handling bullies. You will know exactly what to do in face of one, and have an automatic response. You might fight, run, or call police, or whatever. Your emotions will act like a trigger and your body reacts immediately without your brain's input. That's a comfort pocket. Lets take another example. Lets say that you always follow specific habits before you do something, like for example, riding a bike. You might have to sing a song, tense your muscles, or do whatever before you get on your bike. You will probably not realize you are doing these things unless you consciously focus, or have someone from the outside point it out for you. That's a comfort pocket. Once a comfort pocket is formed, it can no longer destroyed, so be aware of that.
comfort pockets are centered around your emotions. If you have a specific emotional response to a specific living thing, place, idea, or whatever, then your comfort pocket will be directed by that specific response. If your comfort pockets are formed around negative emotions, like for example stress, then you will have to override your old comfort pockets with stronger and newer versions of yourself. We always change, but we don't really forget. The experiences we had are just more difficult to withdraw out from our memories after we override it, not because we forgot it. There's a reason why your dreams can show you your past that you "forgot" about. From this point on, if there's something specific you feel stressed about, then be aware of your emotions, speak your feelings out loud, and write down all your reactions you have towards it. Now, begin to associate a new, more beneficial feeling towards your subject of stress. Think out the feeling and make yourself feel it. Feelings can be changed by changing your energy patterns. Try feeling your negative emotion to the extreme and over dramatize it intentionally to "burst" it, then change your energy patterns to the positive emotion you desire. Form comfort pockets with whatever you learned from the above exercises of un-knotting, deep breathing, balancing positive negative energies.
The importance of forming comfort pocket to handle your stress is that it involves a predictable set of body reactions that you can reuse in automation. Instead of having the reptilian part of your brain give your body a panic response all the time, you can now calm down in most "non life threatening" situations. Try to find EVERYTHING that you feel stress about and apply a comfort pocket to EVERY one of them. This might take a very long time, but it's definitely worth it. If you continuously practice this, then you will obtain wisdom that can rival old people. When I say old, I mean those with more life experience than the rest of us, and has wisdom to handle almost anything.
Since society constantly forces us to hesitate too often, for the wrong reasons, achieving this state has become rare. However, if you are set on doing it, you can even accomplish it when you are still young. Wisdom is not reserved for the elderly only. You can have even more wisdom than the elders when you become an elder yourself by starting early. If you are already elderly, it's still not too late to start, because life is only beginning...until we die.
Managing stress is not only for yourself. You are actually purging evil for the world. In this world, understanding of good and evil is definitely too shallow. It's very vague and makes everybody struggle for reasons that are not even life threatening. One thing that is truly evil in this world is confusion. Confusion is evil because it causes fight for the wrong reasons, and causes unnecessarily deaths and sacrifices. Without confusion, then what remains are recognition, respect, and understanding of each other. Learn to look at your environment differently by twisting your "common sense", because you can actually be more wrong than you think. Learn to look beyond "practical methods" sometimes, because what you consider practical might actually be a complete waste because of lost opportunities. Think your feelings into words, and feel genuinely about your thoughts. Be in tuned with yourself all the time. I wish you good luck, with all this nonsense I wrote.
Showing posts with label frustration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frustration. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
How to Control Your Temper - Selfish Motivation Vs Comfort Pocket
Do you feel that the world treats you unfairly? Is everyone around you irritating you? How do you handle it so that you don't drive everybody away? It's a matter of believing in nonsense, which is what I write.
Your temper didn't just appear in a moment's notice. It has actually been growing and developing for quite some time already. Controlling it properly will require a lot of understanding of yourself. To be able to do that, I will have to provide you some basic concepts of the source of your temper.
Your temper was created based on your need to fight. The reason you have that need is because our body has a mechanism described as "fight or flight" that helps us survive. If you have sufficient combat ability, then you fight. If you are afraid of suffering fatal damage, then you run away. In other words, your temper is your fight against your own fears. Fear might sound like a terrible emotion to have, but you have to learn to accept this natural part of yourself. Our fear is something heavens has bestowed upon us to protect us from danger, and to create new possibilities. Our intelligence is created entirely on the foundation of fear. For example, people are afraid of bacterial infection killing everone, so that fear stimulates them to create antibiotics. If there's no fear, then nothing will ever be created, and that includes innovative ideas. Accepting fear to learn and grow is one thing, but fighting it all the time isn't always the correct solution to your dilemma.
By society's standards today, we clearly don't have to fight or flight ALL the time. However, our minds and emotions are still inclined to follow our primordial ancestors' way of life. That's why in general we almost always resort to fight or flight emotional response when we face any kinds of stress. Our temper is specifically the fight response to our stress. Since we have already physically and mentally evolved very far beyond our ancestors, then it's time to catch up with our emotional control also. From the moment you read this, the goal you should have in mind is to make yourself advance beyond fight or flight mode. Fight or flight mode can still be used, but you should only consider those two modes as techniques for convenience, not a supporting pillar of your personality. To be able to do that, you will have to re-evaluate and fix your comfort pocket and selfish motivation.
Selfish motivation and comfort pocket are not something I came up with. It's something that exists inside everybody who lives in this reality. Selfish motivation is your true desires that exists deep inside you without any garbage ideas harassing it. Comfort pocket is your current personality that you can comfortably define yourself with. Even though it's not really as simple as what I just stated, but for the sake of this piece of writing, that summary should give you a rough idea of the definition of comfort pocket and selfish motivation. When you have a hot temper, it simply means that you have a comfort pocket for controlling situations with an aggressive behavior. It's also possible that you have a selfish motivation for throwing tantrums. I really hope that your selfish motivation is not inclined to do that. If you really are that way, then it means you enjoy throwing a tantrum wherever you go to express yourself. However, if it's only your comfort pocket that is skewered, then there is still better chance of controlling it in your favor.
Comfort pocket oriented temper means that you use your temper in automation to handle stress. In other words, the reason your temper is reflexively let out is because you were actually "forced" to rely on it. Since the first time you used this method to handle your problems, you have genuinely felt that it is an effective solution, so it became your comfort pocket. Comfort pockets can not be controlled by the brain, nor destroyed by any means. Even if you do manage to destroy it, you will become temporarily or permanently insane, because it's a subconscious pillar that secures your sense of being. Being overly reliant on a specific comfort pocket to handle all your life's problems is definitely a mistake, especially if that comfort pocket orients around a negative emotion. For example, whenever you try to convince someone to follow a certain plan, you always dish out your anger when you feel the atmosphere isn't going your way, and you force the target to become a submissive follower of your will. Though I have to say that is a pretty good technique to handle specific situations, especially if the individual you are facing are overly hesitant by nature, however it should not be overly used just to quickly "solve" all your problems. Brilliant and satisfying ways of life requires a constant re-evaluation of who you are, and the goals you aim to achieve. In this sense, since you already have a comfort pocket for your outrageous temper (I'm assuming it has already reached an outrageous level or you won't come and ask for help), you simply have to create new comfort pockets to overlap it's existence.
Comfort pocket overlap is not the same as erasing your old comfort pocket. In other words, even if you begin to use a new comfort pocket to solve your problems, your old comfort pocket oriented around your temper will still exist and be ready to use when you desire to. In this case, you can treat it as a technique for your own convenience instead of a black and white way to define your reputation. To overlap an old comfort pocket, you will have to develop a new comfort pocket oriented around a different emotion. For example, lets say you want to orient a comfort pocket around "relaxation", then the techniques associated with it will have to be very relaxing and comforting. For example, lets say you enjoy beating someone up when the situation doesn't go your way. One day, you suddenly decided that you want to be a more friendly individual (whatever the reason may be), so you start developing techniques that are friendly in nature. You start becoming more relaxed over stressful situations even if you normally think otherwise. As you do this, you will run into many obstacles like the urge to go into an aggressive mode. You have to learn to associate relaxing thought patterns with specific environments and situations. For example, lets say you feel like beating someone up when your expensive shoes gets dirt on it. Instead of thinking that way, start thinking about how you can clean your shoes better, or how to prevent it from being stained in the future. Your focus should be on the situation, not necessarily any specific individual that might've been the "cause" of your problems. Do this a lot and you will find yourself be able to solve more of your life problems more smoothly, because you are learning to think beyond your current limitations. Life is all about a mastery of yourself, so imagine your life starting over as a student. Comfort pocket is all about repetitions and deep thinking about yourself. Making it a complete comfort pocket will require you to overlap every part of your life that can trigger your temper to convert over to your new comfort pocket. If your car triggers your aggressiveness, start thinking deeply about changing that. If your food irritates you, then start thinking about changing your diet or way of cooking. If your friends irritates you, then it's time find new friends or think deeply about their intentions, or are you simply overly expecting things to go a specific way. Once every specific part of your life has been covered, then your comfort pocket is complete and you will rely on it from now on.
Is all of this easy? Probably not. Especially if you have been relying on your temper to solve most of your problems in your whole life. However, believe it or not, every specific environment and situations requires you to have a specific solution for it. It's just that you don't recognize it easily because you are generalizing everything with your temper. So to overlap everything with your new personality will require every specific part of your life to be specifically solved. I wish you good luck, and hope you can enjoy the new relationships you are looking for.
Your temper didn't just appear in a moment's notice. It has actually been growing and developing for quite some time already. Controlling it properly will require a lot of understanding of yourself. To be able to do that, I will have to provide you some basic concepts of the source of your temper.
Your temper was created based on your need to fight. The reason you have that need is because our body has a mechanism described as "fight or flight" that helps us survive. If you have sufficient combat ability, then you fight. If you are afraid of suffering fatal damage, then you run away. In other words, your temper is your fight against your own fears. Fear might sound like a terrible emotion to have, but you have to learn to accept this natural part of yourself. Our fear is something heavens has bestowed upon us to protect us from danger, and to create new possibilities. Our intelligence is created entirely on the foundation of fear. For example, people are afraid of bacterial infection killing everone, so that fear stimulates them to create antibiotics. If there's no fear, then nothing will ever be created, and that includes innovative ideas. Accepting fear to learn and grow is one thing, but fighting it all the time isn't always the correct solution to your dilemma.
By society's standards today, we clearly don't have to fight or flight ALL the time. However, our minds and emotions are still inclined to follow our primordial ancestors' way of life. That's why in general we almost always resort to fight or flight emotional response when we face any kinds of stress. Our temper is specifically the fight response to our stress. Since we have already physically and mentally evolved very far beyond our ancestors, then it's time to catch up with our emotional control also. From the moment you read this, the goal you should have in mind is to make yourself advance beyond fight or flight mode. Fight or flight mode can still be used, but you should only consider those two modes as techniques for convenience, not a supporting pillar of your personality. To be able to do that, you will have to re-evaluate and fix your comfort pocket and selfish motivation.
Selfish motivation and comfort pocket are not something I came up with. It's something that exists inside everybody who lives in this reality. Selfish motivation is your true desires that exists deep inside you without any garbage ideas harassing it. Comfort pocket is your current personality that you can comfortably define yourself with. Even though it's not really as simple as what I just stated, but for the sake of this piece of writing, that summary should give you a rough idea of the definition of comfort pocket and selfish motivation. When you have a hot temper, it simply means that you have a comfort pocket for controlling situations with an aggressive behavior. It's also possible that you have a selfish motivation for throwing tantrums. I really hope that your selfish motivation is not inclined to do that. If you really are that way, then it means you enjoy throwing a tantrum wherever you go to express yourself. However, if it's only your comfort pocket that is skewered, then there is still better chance of controlling it in your favor.
Comfort pocket oriented temper means that you use your temper in automation to handle stress. In other words, the reason your temper is reflexively let out is because you were actually "forced" to rely on it. Since the first time you used this method to handle your problems, you have genuinely felt that it is an effective solution, so it became your comfort pocket. Comfort pockets can not be controlled by the brain, nor destroyed by any means. Even if you do manage to destroy it, you will become temporarily or permanently insane, because it's a subconscious pillar that secures your sense of being. Being overly reliant on a specific comfort pocket to handle all your life's problems is definitely a mistake, especially if that comfort pocket orients around a negative emotion. For example, whenever you try to convince someone to follow a certain plan, you always dish out your anger when you feel the atmosphere isn't going your way, and you force the target to become a submissive follower of your will. Though I have to say that is a pretty good technique to handle specific situations, especially if the individual you are facing are overly hesitant by nature, however it should not be overly used just to quickly "solve" all your problems. Brilliant and satisfying ways of life requires a constant re-evaluation of who you are, and the goals you aim to achieve. In this sense, since you already have a comfort pocket for your outrageous temper (I'm assuming it has already reached an outrageous level or you won't come and ask for help), you simply have to create new comfort pockets to overlap it's existence.
Comfort pocket overlap is not the same as erasing your old comfort pocket. In other words, even if you begin to use a new comfort pocket to solve your problems, your old comfort pocket oriented around your temper will still exist and be ready to use when you desire to. In this case, you can treat it as a technique for your own convenience instead of a black and white way to define your reputation. To overlap an old comfort pocket, you will have to develop a new comfort pocket oriented around a different emotion. For example, lets say you want to orient a comfort pocket around "relaxation", then the techniques associated with it will have to be very relaxing and comforting. For example, lets say you enjoy beating someone up when the situation doesn't go your way. One day, you suddenly decided that you want to be a more friendly individual (whatever the reason may be), so you start developing techniques that are friendly in nature. You start becoming more relaxed over stressful situations even if you normally think otherwise. As you do this, you will run into many obstacles like the urge to go into an aggressive mode. You have to learn to associate relaxing thought patterns with specific environments and situations. For example, lets say you feel like beating someone up when your expensive shoes gets dirt on it. Instead of thinking that way, start thinking about how you can clean your shoes better, or how to prevent it from being stained in the future. Your focus should be on the situation, not necessarily any specific individual that might've been the "cause" of your problems. Do this a lot and you will find yourself be able to solve more of your life problems more smoothly, because you are learning to think beyond your current limitations. Life is all about a mastery of yourself, so imagine your life starting over as a student. Comfort pocket is all about repetitions and deep thinking about yourself. Making it a complete comfort pocket will require you to overlap every part of your life that can trigger your temper to convert over to your new comfort pocket. If your car triggers your aggressiveness, start thinking deeply about changing that. If your food irritates you, then start thinking about changing your diet or way of cooking. If your friends irritates you, then it's time find new friends or think deeply about their intentions, or are you simply overly expecting things to go a specific way. Once every specific part of your life has been covered, then your comfort pocket is complete and you will rely on it from now on.
Is all of this easy? Probably not. Especially if you have been relying on your temper to solve most of your problems in your whole life. However, believe it or not, every specific environment and situations requires you to have a specific solution for it. It's just that you don't recognize it easily because you are generalizing everything with your temper. So to overlap everything with your new personality will require every specific part of your life to be specifically solved. I wish you good luck, and hope you can enjoy the new relationships you are looking for.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Poem - How to Recover From a Loss
Enjoy your poem of nonsense
Loss is like a cup of tea
That had lost its reviving heat
The beauty you used to see
Appears in the blue skies that you'll meet
There are days when muddy clouds die away
And the sunlight shines, promising to stay
My eyes suddenly open
For the very first time
Tomorrow is simply another day
At present, nothing matters - -
Because the present will remain
Thinking back to my actions
What was I meant to be?
Was it for him?
Was it for her?
Was it for me?
No, it was for that bird
that I currently see
flying elegantly then disappears
like my past in a blink of an eye
Goals are safe
Choices are pains
Without expectations
My heart is free
My new horizon
Can be anywhere
Can be anyone
Can be anything
My stomach growled
I laughed
Because I am alive
I will find new horizons
When old ones are gone
Loss is like a cup of tea
That had lost its reviving heat
The beauty you used to see
Appears in the blue skies that you'll meet
There are days when muddy clouds die away
And the sunlight shines, promising to stay
My eyes suddenly open
For the very first time
Tomorrow is simply another day
At present, nothing matters - -
Because the present will remain
Thinking back to my actions
What was I meant to be?
Was it for him?
Was it for her?
Was it for me?
No, it was for that bird
that I currently see
flying elegantly then disappears
like my past in a blink of an eye
Goals are safe
Choices are pains
Without expectations
My heart is free
My new horizon
Can be anywhere
Can be anyone
Can be anything
My stomach growled
I laughed
Because I am alive
I will find new horizons
When old ones are gone
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
A Realistic Perspective On The Relationship Between a Parent and the Child
Here's more nonsense this time. However, I added a little dramatic experience from my life. Well, before you complain about how much more unfortunate other children in this world are, or however similar and common my experiences are, why don't you take a look at it in a different perspective? For example, "why is such an experience so "common" among all the people in the world?". If you can't answer that, then you're just going to inherit this stuff and pass it on to your children, just like our idiotic parents. Not like they are true idiots, but when it comes to parenting, they can't be that intelligent if we have something left to complain about :) Hee hee hee hee. If you have anything to say then please don't hesitate to leave a comment below.
Earlier I had an argument with an individual. She used to be an important part of my life. However, over these years, she's becoming more and more of a stranger that I know very well. Yea, technically that's how I feel or maybe how most of us feels. She's my relative. Sometimes I can even consider her a great inspiration (to decide to help the world) because of my hatred towards her. Sometimes she's a friend.... but most often, I've lost most of my emotional connections to her.
At least I used to think I hate her. However, I decided that to have revenge on someone, hating that individual is making that person too lucky to deserve a part of your memories (and it's true). I've decided to release her from hatred and forgive her. In the end, I learned that one positive and one negative does neutralize each other. In the end, I feel nothing for her except for one thing; responsibility. If you're wondering if she's my ex wife from Satan's realm, then you are wrong. She is my mother.
I learned hating people requires vast amounts of strength, and you will have to reinforce it everyday because it gets diluted by other parts of your life. However, if you become like me, stop hating someone, simultaneously will also lead you to stop loving that someone. Love and hate goes together as a balance which constantly reminds each other the force they are fighting against. Don't get me wrong. I do care for her, but only if she's about to be in imminent danger, in other words; just like every other stranger I can imagine.
You have heard about many terrible parents, and how gurus teach you never to hate your parents. Learn to love them and such. I agree. But for me, I love without any feelings. I just follow protocols to decide what is in her best interest without over dramatizing with common "super care". If you want an example, I can give you one. If your mom is sick, what would you do for her? Buy her a card? Talk to her a lot? Cheer her up by cleaning up for her? For me, the emotionless me, the best alternative for me is to force her to carry her own weight, judge her own situations, and solve her own problems. The only time I'll lend a hand is if I noticed that she's tried her best, and it'll be nonsense not to stretch out your hand and give her a boost; like if she can't even breath correctly or move her limbs and such.
Terrible parents can be alcohol addicts, drug addicts, sex addicts, or whatever you can think of. For me, my parents are nothing like that at all, but I won't and can't judge others for what they do, because everybody follows their aims based on their strongest selfish motivation. However, if you stated that a "non addict" can be a great parent, then reply would be "half-half". The child will have to be lucky. Parents are usually not ready to have children. Nobody ever trained, or prepared for every little situation that will inevitably occur, but rather couples decided to follow their feelings and just go with the flow. In other words, people take a new life too naively. It's more than just stuffing food into a toddler and forcing its flesh to grow. It's more than just pushing them into danger in order to let them realize survival techniques. It's more than just taking money from the government and giving a small share to them. If you ever watch movies where children are trained to be assassins, you would've realized one thing that most parents don't realize; even though children growing up to be assassins (or soldiers, etc. ) are pitiful, but normal children can also be just as pitiful or even more. For those children in training, plans have been carefully decided long ahead of time to protect them from real dangers, whether that is physical or emotional danger. Most parents focus on physical dangers, but definitely almost all parents completely neglect emotional dangers.
Developing an emotionally healthy child is more than just patience and iron fist force. It's not all about delivering pain to them then counseling them afterwards, or forcing them to see a psychiatrist if once they have emotional issues. Why not solve the problem now and on your own? This pattern of negativity occurs because parents usually have been emotionally abused themselves, which became a permanent comfort pocket gives the same negative protocols that deals with the next generation the same way they were taught unconsciously. It's all about balance. Balance is important, but most people don't realize how important it is because we all have a false sense of stability. Time runs, gravity pulls, volcano explodes, no part of our world is stable in nature. This holds even more true, or should I say more obvious in a living being's emotions. Its changes are obvious though it's not dramatic and big as mother earth. However, we have a natural tendency to ignore anything irrational beyond the level of our intelligence. Fortunately, we all get old. Eventually old people realize their mistakes and ignorance, but all is already too late, because they have already stained the next generation with their negativity, which will further spread like an epidemic for generations on. Even though emotional civil war within the family could've been prevented, and was definitely unnecessary, but this spiral of nonsense simply continues nowadays.
Balancing someone's feelings for you and your feelings towards them is the best way to show care. It's not always about speaking loving, and encouraging words, or delivering hateful and aggressive abuses. Sometimes, you have to encourage, but other times you have to be tough, but other times, you just have to learn to take the blow from the target you are aiming to help, by intelligently sorting out the facts. To help someone learn and grow, the helper has to learn to grow as well. It's a reinforcing cycle that both have to maintain in a dynamically violent, even gentle, sad, yet exciting relationship that constantly has opposite, and neutral emotions causing friction with each other. Sometimes, it also means to show strength, but weakness as well.
To conclude all of this. I wrote this article to release my stressed out feelings. Take it as you want it, it's not meant to be your advice or rulebook, it's meant to be your inspiration. I'm being serious too. Just read it like a story book, and realize that you are not alone in this world. I'm not your friend, but I'm definitely not a stranger.
Earlier I had an argument with an individual. She used to be an important part of my life. However, over these years, she's becoming more and more of a stranger that I know very well. Yea, technically that's how I feel or maybe how most of us feels. She's my relative. Sometimes I can even consider her a great inspiration (to decide to help the world) because of my hatred towards her. Sometimes she's a friend.... but most often, I've lost most of my emotional connections to her.
At least I used to think I hate her. However, I decided that to have revenge on someone, hating that individual is making that person too lucky to deserve a part of your memories (and it's true). I've decided to release her from hatred and forgive her. In the end, I learned that one positive and one negative does neutralize each other. In the end, I feel nothing for her except for one thing; responsibility. If you're wondering if she's my ex wife from Satan's realm, then you are wrong. She is my mother.
I learned hating people requires vast amounts of strength, and you will have to reinforce it everyday because it gets diluted by other parts of your life. However, if you become like me, stop hating someone, simultaneously will also lead you to stop loving that someone. Love and hate goes together as a balance which constantly reminds each other the force they are fighting against. Don't get me wrong. I do care for her, but only if she's about to be in imminent danger, in other words; just like every other stranger I can imagine.
You have heard about many terrible parents, and how gurus teach you never to hate your parents. Learn to love them and such. I agree. But for me, I love without any feelings. I just follow protocols to decide what is in her best interest without over dramatizing with common "super care". If you want an example, I can give you one. If your mom is sick, what would you do for her? Buy her a card? Talk to her a lot? Cheer her up by cleaning up for her? For me, the emotionless me, the best alternative for me is to force her to carry her own weight, judge her own situations, and solve her own problems. The only time I'll lend a hand is if I noticed that she's tried her best, and it'll be nonsense not to stretch out your hand and give her a boost; like if she can't even breath correctly or move her limbs and such.
Terrible parents can be alcohol addicts, drug addicts, sex addicts, or whatever you can think of. For me, my parents are nothing like that at all, but I won't and can't judge others for what they do, because everybody follows their aims based on their strongest selfish motivation. However, if you stated that a "non addict" can be a great parent, then reply would be "half-half". The child will have to be lucky. Parents are usually not ready to have children. Nobody ever trained, or prepared for every little situation that will inevitably occur, but rather couples decided to follow their feelings and just go with the flow. In other words, people take a new life too naively. It's more than just stuffing food into a toddler and forcing its flesh to grow. It's more than just pushing them into danger in order to let them realize survival techniques. It's more than just taking money from the government and giving a small share to them. If you ever watch movies where children are trained to be assassins, you would've realized one thing that most parents don't realize; even though children growing up to be assassins (or soldiers, etc. ) are pitiful, but normal children can also be just as pitiful or even more. For those children in training, plans have been carefully decided long ahead of time to protect them from real dangers, whether that is physical or emotional danger. Most parents focus on physical dangers, but definitely almost all parents completely neglect emotional dangers.
Developing an emotionally healthy child is more than just patience and iron fist force. It's not all about delivering pain to them then counseling them afterwards, or forcing them to see a psychiatrist if once they have emotional issues. Why not solve the problem now and on your own? This pattern of negativity occurs because parents usually have been emotionally abused themselves, which became a permanent comfort pocket gives the same negative protocols that deals with the next generation the same way they were taught unconsciously. It's all about balance. Balance is important, but most people don't realize how important it is because we all have a false sense of stability. Time runs, gravity pulls, volcano explodes, no part of our world is stable in nature. This holds even more true, or should I say more obvious in a living being's emotions. Its changes are obvious though it's not dramatic and big as mother earth. However, we have a natural tendency to ignore anything irrational beyond the level of our intelligence. Fortunately, we all get old. Eventually old people realize their mistakes and ignorance, but all is already too late, because they have already stained the next generation with their negativity, which will further spread like an epidemic for generations on. Even though emotional civil war within the family could've been prevented, and was definitely unnecessary, but this spiral of nonsense simply continues nowadays.
Balancing someone's feelings for you and your feelings towards them is the best way to show care. It's not always about speaking loving, and encouraging words, or delivering hateful and aggressive abuses. Sometimes, you have to encourage, but other times you have to be tough, but other times, you just have to learn to take the blow from the target you are aiming to help, by intelligently sorting out the facts. To help someone learn and grow, the helper has to learn to grow as well. It's a reinforcing cycle that both have to maintain in a dynamically violent, even gentle, sad, yet exciting relationship that constantly has opposite, and neutral emotions causing friction with each other. Sometimes, it also means to show strength, but weakness as well.
To conclude all of this. I wrote this article to release my stressed out feelings. Take it as you want it, it's not meant to be your advice or rulebook, it's meant to be your inspiration. I'm being serious too. Just read it like a story book, and realize that you are not alone in this world. I'm not your friend, but I'm definitely not a stranger.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
How to Get Rid of Pain - Comfort Pocket Application
Pain is literally nonsense. So lets find out why. Leave a comment later when you are done.
Pain can be mental or physical. Depending on the degree, either of them can be devastating. In general, everybody is more fascinated by mental pain, because it interferes with directly who you want to be and actions you want to take. Physical pains can also interfere the same way, but if you are selfishly motivated enough, then you will find ways around these minor obstacles, but mental pain directly interferes with your beliefs before you can even take your first step. What can be done?
Physical pain is simple to handle. Get a band-aid and patch it up. If that isn't enough then seek medical advice or self heal by re-evaluating your comfort pockets. Mental pain is more difficult. What brand of band-aid are you going to use to patch up the hole in your heart? Good news is, you can get rid of the pain. Bad news is, it's much easier to prevent than getting rid of it.
First let's focus on preventing pain so that you don't add to your problems. In order to do that, you will need to recognize what pain really is. Pain is one of the emotions in this world that is defined by words. There are plenty of other types of emotions and emotional combinations that can not be explained by words at all. No matter what type of emotion it is, any emotion is actually a simple contrast to fear. That is not to simplify definitions of emotions by weighing them against each other on opposite extremes. For example, opposite of fear isn't necessarily happiness or even fearlessness. It's all a relative contrast, not unrelated individual elements that can exist on their own. I'm saying that ALL emotions are based on fear. It's like the saying that "there is only light when there's darkness to contrast it". If you don't see any shadows then everything will just be a bright blank. If there's no emotional contrast to maximum negativity then there's no emotions at all. That's why when it comes to fear, everybody is equal. Excitement is the feeling of satisfaction of outwitting fear. Anger is the aggressive feeling of fighting sadness. Sadness is the feeling of losing something in face of fear. Happiness is the feeling of gaining something in face of fear. The nature of happiness can be explained by imagining yourself doing something predictable MANY times, or actually doing it many times. For example, watching your favorite movie many times. You might be happy and excited the first few times, but your happiness will decrease the more you do it. There's a reason for this. Our ancestry and development has given us many skills to fight against danger, so anything unpredictable and creative is very appealing and exciting to us. On the other hand, if we have nothing to struggle against then our body will deteriorate due to laziness and we will lose our ability to combat our surroundings. Since our body foresees this possibility, it will resist facing predictable events over and over in two ways, one is to induce boredom as a signal to stop the activity completely, and two is to create a comfort pocket, so that we "blank out" the period of "repeats" and save our energy for more interesting events. All emotions have their explanation based on contrast of fear, but I'll focus on the pain in this piece of writing. So what is pain?
Pain is the one of the more devastating emotions because pain is the acknowledgement of fear. If you are not convinced then lets take another example. Imagine you are currently in a battlefield. You are fighting left and right, and you see people losing limbs and bleeding all over the place. Now lets imagine yourself getting punched in the face by the enemy without actually causing you any major bleeding. That punch will not probably not hurt you at all. It would probably cause a little damage, but it won't give you much pain to consider. You can call it adrenaline or whatever, but you won't acknowledge there is pain because there are much more serious damage that you observed to be happening in your surroundings. Now, lets contrast the previous bloody scenery with a calmer one. Lets say you are reading a book or enjoying a sandwich in the comfort of your living room then someone suddenly punches you in the face. Lets also assume it's the same strength as the punch we discussed in the battlefield. Would this punch hurt? Definitely. Why? The reason is because in a calm surrounding, your body's physical capabilities are not maximized by adrenaline, so in a weaker state, you are more afraid of damage even if it's just a regular punch. I'm not saying adrenaline makes you strong, but it buffs you up with high pressure body mechanisms allowing your body to take blows with less damage and less pain. In a bloody battlefield, a punch is not even recognized as something devastating, because it seems so minor. In a daily environment, however, a punch has a much higher damage value MENTALLY compared to the dangers of a battlefield. This can also be used to describe emotional pain one of the closest emotions to fear. Once pain is acknowledged, you will have trouble even making the right decisions not to mention recovering from it. To prevent that from happening, you will have to prevent and not acknowledge your fear which supports the development of pain.
Like the battlefield example earlier, pain simply does not exist if you don't acknowledge any damage has happened. This also applies to emotional pain. Lets have another example. Imagine that you are five years old and your parent yells at you and calls you a spoiled brat. At that age, and at that moment, you would probably feel hurt (if you don't then think of another example in which you are more vulnerable). Lets imagine the same parent yelled at you and called you a spoiled brat when you are one-hundred-twenty years old. Do you think you would still feel pain? Maybe a little, but I would pretty much assume your pain very little to none. Other than the fact that you have aged, you also realize that you are not a brat at that age. So it doesn't make sense to react with any form of emotional damage. What does this all mean? Pain can only happen when you acknowledge the fear that supports it. That acknowledgement happens simply because you are already a believer of the accusation before you got yelled at for it, or you have always been indecisive or ignorant of certain traits of yours, allowing someone else to cause you direct damage. Lets say for example that you believe you are a loser your whole life, then if you meet someone that accuses you of being a loser, then you will react painfully because you confirmed your feelings with outside influence. In fact, once pain is confirmed and produced, all sorts of feelings can stem from it like anger, jealousy, and hatred, but those emotions can stem from fear itself without pain as a secondary step. Does this mean that you should you have no fear? No. You should enjoy a full spectrum of emotions. Fear also sharpens your mind, due to it's nature to strengthen your resolve to struggle against your environment. Besides, your positive emotions relies on your negative emotions to exist.
Preventing pain can be done by looking at the bigger picture of your whole life (if that's not enough then involve the whole world's life), and constantly maintain a habit of looking down on your current fears to not acknowledge it's intensity and produce unnecessary amounts of pain. It's analogical to the battlefield example earlier. The reason that punch didn't hurt is simply because there are bigger and more dangerous threats out there. To prevent pain, a good idea is to think higher and much more serious things that you should consider strategically, so you can think ahead. For example, lets say you have stage fright and the pressure you have to endure by going on stage is giving you unbelievable amounts of pain. First calm down by thinking back to the purpose of going on stage. Think about the bigger meaning you are trying to express. Instead of being concerned about the stage and the audience's "pre-opinions", be concerned about why you "definitely" needed to be heard by your audience. Think of any feeling or reason that brought you here today. The reason should be so big and important that you will still push yourself to go through all the random reactions your body is giving you and deliver your message. Whatever you do, find the true purpose that motivated you to commit yourself to doing. If you are not doing anything and simply receiving instructions from teachers, parents, friends, significant others, coaches, and you are getting "sick" of it, and feeling in pain, then think about two elements. One is time, the other is purpose. For purpose, think about why you absolutely have to listen or not listen, as a direct connection to your future (which can happen really quickly if you think hard enough). For time, think about how long a your lifespan can be. If you are destined to have a short life span, then maybe you can consider doing it another way, but if you believe you are like average, with the potential to live up to at least eighty years old, then do a very quick contrast. Is the time investment dedicated to listening take up more than fifty percent of your life span? If it does, then it's time to discriminate between useful information and useless information objectively. If it does not then endure, because you know it will just be a small "sacrifice" of time in your life, considering how long "average life" can actually last. Even if you follow all these steps, you will still need to acknowledge some parts of your fears, which is a natural mechanism to keep you alive, but minimizing it is the key. However, what if you are already in pain and prevention is no longer an option?
Getting rid of pain while you are in pain is much more difficult, because you have acknowledged the pain, and you have already made the mistakes to support it (those mistakes can also be emotional). What does it mean? It means that a comfort pocket has been formed for your current pain. If you are stuck in this scenario then you will have lots of work to do to get over your pain. First step you have to take is to prevent this pain from spreading to other areas of your life. Break connections that you formed in relation to it. You have to minimize the damage before it eats up your life. For example, lets say that you just got kicked out of your house, because you were considered "useless" by others in the household (of course if you can prevent that belief it's better, but if its too late then read on.). Second step is to be taken even more strictly which is to sit down, relax and begin listing all the things you are really good at or skillful at. Don't begin judging which skill is "important" or "not important", because the key is to list it all out. Don't lie to yourself and start listing all the things you are not good at, and beginning self criticism. Just make a list. Get some pen and paper to do it (pencil is fine, or marker, or write in the sand with your finger, it doesn't matter!!!). After you made a thorough list, try to remember that no matter how bad you think of yourself, this list is not to be contaminated, because you are absolutely good at them. Don't start hypnotizing yourself into believing the opposite. Don't start believing those skills are useless, whatever they are. Maybe you believe you are really good at crying, and you believe its a very useless skill. Don't think that way. You simply don't know how to put it into practical use that can aid your success in life yet. Once you've done this, your pain shouldn't spread anymore. Third step is to look deep into your pain. Since your pain has developed, a specific comfort pocket has already been created to contain it. You will have to face it head on or you will never be able to uproot the problem. To complete this step, you have to first explain your pain in detail. Pain is a very vague emotion most of the time. There are many occurrences in which your pain can not be explained at the absence of the "source". For example, lets say you argued with your best friend and both of you "forgave each other" later on, but for some strange reason, both of you still feel an illogical "wall" or "distance". The relationship is in pain, but the reason is unclear. The reason for this phenomenon is because both of you are avoiding the real reason which is keeping the pain acknowledged and ALIVE. We usually aren't very clear as in why we are in pain. This course of action can be due to any reason, but to get rid of your pain permanently, you have to find out and do it fast. Our memories are stored in subconscious comfort pockets, so the longer you wait, the more unclear the reason of pain will become, though the truth is unchanged, it's much harder to withdraw from your memories. To do that, you will have to really think back to your pain and clearly express it into words that can describe it. Once you find out the reason for your pain, then the next step is to transform it.
Pain is a strong emotion due to it's close relationship with fear, so comfort pockets centered around it are also very strong. Forgetting and ignoring it is impossible. Don't even bother. Even if you "temporarily forget it", it will come back one day and hurt you. However, transforming it is still within the range of your abilities. There are several obstacles you have to handle to transform it.
First obstacle you should try to bypass, is the fact that you acknowledged your fear in the first place, creating this pain. Since you already did, it's impossible to reverse the deep acknowledgement. The only method remaining to resolve this obstacle is to make yourself stronger so that your pain seem much less harmful and aggressive. You will have to find more important tasks to complete. The general public relies heavily on this method but has failed to completely remedy the problem. The reason is because this method can only temporarily suppress your pain, but it doesn't contain enough strength alone to eliminate your pain completely. For example, lets say you lost your favorite pet that has been with you for ten years. Lets also say that you are two are very close, practically as close as married couples. You are in so much pain, you decided to take up tennis to forget your pain, and forget about the past. The flaw of this method is the possibility of encountering random events that can trigger this memory. Lets say you randomly meet someone who holds a pet that looks, acts, behaves exactly the same way as your dead pet. If you can't emotionally feel the pet example, then substitute the pet with family members, friends, or significant other. Imagine losing them, or maybe you already have. Any encounter has a possibility of resurfacing your past and making you suffer again. However, you'll still have to proactively find some goal to attain to bypass this first obstacle. After you complete this step, then you will have to take the next step in transformation
After you minimized the damage of your pain, then the next step is to look deeply into your pain. This step is rather difficult, so you will have to learn to take it slowly. For this step, you have to do a little meditation. If you're not a fan of meditating, now's your chance to change your mind. It doesn't involve any religion. It's only the art of mastering yourself. For this meditation, you have to relax, take deep breaths, and let your mind travel back to the time and event when you suffered the pain, for dead pet example above, that would be the moment you realized your pet was dead. I want you to think of your pain and let your mind and body suffer once more, but since we minimized it, the damage shouldn't be too serious. The reason for this exercise is because our pains are usually amplified by the pressure of the situation, so remembering it in a relaxed environment (even though you might not feel relaxed) like during meditation will allow you to look at event more clearly in a third person perspective without adding unnecessary oil to the fire of your pain. Once you remember, tears, anger, and frustration might come. It's alright, let yourself cry the cry, yell your yell. Take deep breaths and let the feelings come and go as smoothly as you can. Don't hold them in and think too much. Best option is to not think at all and just feel. Feel it come and feel it go. If you can separate different emotions apart then break them apart. Don't let them conglomerate and contaminate each other. Pain itself can be amplified by other emotions including happiness, sadness, anger, boredom, hatred, etc so be careful. Different emotions can be caused by different events you had in the past. They don't necessarily relate to your pain, but they can contribute to it, if not used right. For example, you feel pain from losing a pet you've owned for a long time. At some point you might think about the happy moments you had with your pet, and you realize those good times are over and feel pain. The pain you feel should be isolated from the happy memories you had related to the same loss. They should not contaminate each other. If you had happy memories then treat it as a once in a lifetime experience that is part of living, making it enjoyable and fruitful. Its similar to having dessert. Just savor and remember how much you enjoy the dessert you had, instead of becoming frustrated over the fact that it's poop that comes of out of your butt now. Once you completed the previous two steps then your pain is pretty much harmless, but here comes the most important part which can only happen after you completed the previous two steps.
The last obstacle to bypass is to try to understand the big picture. In other words, how this pain can help you in your future. Believe in it too. Treat it like an asset. Pain when synchronized with your whole being can aid you and become a very helpful tool. This step can be taken even after you prevented your pain from happening. For example, for the pet example earlier, consider the death of your pet as a reason to protect weak beings from being hurt. Think of destiny trying to help you understand how to feel the preciousness of life of weak creatures. You can also think of many other things the death of your pet can help you or teach how to walk the path of your life with strength.
Getting through the whole process of getting rid of pain as opposed to preventing pain can be quite time consuming and difficult so I usually don't recommend anybody take this route in life just to add some strength. There's plenty of other ways. Nevertheless, strength is strength, better than a burden. With this pain as your past and your asset, anything that repeats in the future similar to this pain will simply strengthen your resolve and increase your motivation. No matter what you do simply don't give up and you will definitely find your way.
Pain can be mental or physical. Depending on the degree, either of them can be devastating. In general, everybody is more fascinated by mental pain, because it interferes with directly who you want to be and actions you want to take. Physical pains can also interfere the same way, but if you are selfishly motivated enough, then you will find ways around these minor obstacles, but mental pain directly interferes with your beliefs before you can even take your first step. What can be done?
Physical pain is simple to handle. Get a band-aid and patch it up. If that isn't enough then seek medical advice or self heal by re-evaluating your comfort pockets. Mental pain is more difficult. What brand of band-aid are you going to use to patch up the hole in your heart? Good news is, you can get rid of the pain. Bad news is, it's much easier to prevent than getting rid of it.
First let's focus on preventing pain so that you don't add to your problems. In order to do that, you will need to recognize what pain really is. Pain is one of the emotions in this world that is defined by words. There are plenty of other types of emotions and emotional combinations that can not be explained by words at all. No matter what type of emotion it is, any emotion is actually a simple contrast to fear. That is not to simplify definitions of emotions by weighing them against each other on opposite extremes. For example, opposite of fear isn't necessarily happiness or even fearlessness. It's all a relative contrast, not unrelated individual elements that can exist on their own. I'm saying that ALL emotions are based on fear. It's like the saying that "there is only light when there's darkness to contrast it". If you don't see any shadows then everything will just be a bright blank. If there's no emotional contrast to maximum negativity then there's no emotions at all. That's why when it comes to fear, everybody is equal. Excitement is the feeling of satisfaction of outwitting fear. Anger is the aggressive feeling of fighting sadness. Sadness is the feeling of losing something in face of fear. Happiness is the feeling of gaining something in face of fear. The nature of happiness can be explained by imagining yourself doing something predictable MANY times, or actually doing it many times. For example, watching your favorite movie many times. You might be happy and excited the first few times, but your happiness will decrease the more you do it. There's a reason for this. Our ancestry and development has given us many skills to fight against danger, so anything unpredictable and creative is very appealing and exciting to us. On the other hand, if we have nothing to struggle against then our body will deteriorate due to laziness and we will lose our ability to combat our surroundings. Since our body foresees this possibility, it will resist facing predictable events over and over in two ways, one is to induce boredom as a signal to stop the activity completely, and two is to create a comfort pocket, so that we "blank out" the period of "repeats" and save our energy for more interesting events. All emotions have their explanation based on contrast of fear, but I'll focus on the pain in this piece of writing. So what is pain?
Pain is the one of the more devastating emotions because pain is the acknowledgement of fear. If you are not convinced then lets take another example. Imagine you are currently in a battlefield. You are fighting left and right, and you see people losing limbs and bleeding all over the place. Now lets imagine yourself getting punched in the face by the enemy without actually causing you any major bleeding. That punch will not probably not hurt you at all. It would probably cause a little damage, but it won't give you much pain to consider. You can call it adrenaline or whatever, but you won't acknowledge there is pain because there are much more serious damage that you observed to be happening in your surroundings. Now, lets contrast the previous bloody scenery with a calmer one. Lets say you are reading a book or enjoying a sandwich in the comfort of your living room then someone suddenly punches you in the face. Lets also assume it's the same strength as the punch we discussed in the battlefield. Would this punch hurt? Definitely. Why? The reason is because in a calm surrounding, your body's physical capabilities are not maximized by adrenaline, so in a weaker state, you are more afraid of damage even if it's just a regular punch. I'm not saying adrenaline makes you strong, but it buffs you up with high pressure body mechanisms allowing your body to take blows with less damage and less pain. In a bloody battlefield, a punch is not even recognized as something devastating, because it seems so minor. In a daily environment, however, a punch has a much higher damage value MENTALLY compared to the dangers of a battlefield. This can also be used to describe emotional pain one of the closest emotions to fear. Once pain is acknowledged, you will have trouble even making the right decisions not to mention recovering from it. To prevent that from happening, you will have to prevent and not acknowledge your fear which supports the development of pain.
Like the battlefield example earlier, pain simply does not exist if you don't acknowledge any damage has happened. This also applies to emotional pain. Lets have another example. Imagine that you are five years old and your parent yells at you and calls you a spoiled brat. At that age, and at that moment, you would probably feel hurt (if you don't then think of another example in which you are more vulnerable). Lets imagine the same parent yelled at you and called you a spoiled brat when you are one-hundred-twenty years old. Do you think you would still feel pain? Maybe a little, but I would pretty much assume your pain very little to none. Other than the fact that you have aged, you also realize that you are not a brat at that age. So it doesn't make sense to react with any form of emotional damage. What does this all mean? Pain can only happen when you acknowledge the fear that supports it. That acknowledgement happens simply because you are already a believer of the accusation before you got yelled at for it, or you have always been indecisive or ignorant of certain traits of yours, allowing someone else to cause you direct damage. Lets say for example that you believe you are a loser your whole life, then if you meet someone that accuses you of being a loser, then you will react painfully because you confirmed your feelings with outside influence. In fact, once pain is confirmed and produced, all sorts of feelings can stem from it like anger, jealousy, and hatred, but those emotions can stem from fear itself without pain as a secondary step. Does this mean that you should you have no fear? No. You should enjoy a full spectrum of emotions. Fear also sharpens your mind, due to it's nature to strengthen your resolve to struggle against your environment. Besides, your positive emotions relies on your negative emotions to exist.
Preventing pain can be done by looking at the bigger picture of your whole life (if that's not enough then involve the whole world's life), and constantly maintain a habit of looking down on your current fears to not acknowledge it's intensity and produce unnecessary amounts of pain. It's analogical to the battlefield example earlier. The reason that punch didn't hurt is simply because there are bigger and more dangerous threats out there. To prevent pain, a good idea is to think higher and much more serious things that you should consider strategically, so you can think ahead. For example, lets say you have stage fright and the pressure you have to endure by going on stage is giving you unbelievable amounts of pain. First calm down by thinking back to the purpose of going on stage. Think about the bigger meaning you are trying to express. Instead of being concerned about the stage and the audience's "pre-opinions", be concerned about why you "definitely" needed to be heard by your audience. Think of any feeling or reason that brought you here today. The reason should be so big and important that you will still push yourself to go through all the random reactions your body is giving you and deliver your message. Whatever you do, find the true purpose that motivated you to commit yourself to doing. If you are not doing anything and simply receiving instructions from teachers, parents, friends, significant others, coaches, and you are getting "sick" of it, and feeling in pain, then think about two elements. One is time, the other is purpose. For purpose, think about why you absolutely have to listen or not listen, as a direct connection to your future (which can happen really quickly if you think hard enough). For time, think about how long a your lifespan can be. If you are destined to have a short life span, then maybe you can consider doing it another way, but if you believe you are like average, with the potential to live up to at least eighty years old, then do a very quick contrast. Is the time investment dedicated to listening take up more than fifty percent of your life span? If it does, then it's time to discriminate between useful information and useless information objectively. If it does not then endure, because you know it will just be a small "sacrifice" of time in your life, considering how long "average life" can actually last. Even if you follow all these steps, you will still need to acknowledge some parts of your fears, which is a natural mechanism to keep you alive, but minimizing it is the key. However, what if you are already in pain and prevention is no longer an option?
Getting rid of pain while you are in pain is much more difficult, because you have acknowledged the pain, and you have already made the mistakes to support it (those mistakes can also be emotional). What does it mean? It means that a comfort pocket has been formed for your current pain. If you are stuck in this scenario then you will have lots of work to do to get over your pain. First step you have to take is to prevent this pain from spreading to other areas of your life. Break connections that you formed in relation to it. You have to minimize the damage before it eats up your life. For example, lets say that you just got kicked out of your house, because you were considered "useless" by others in the household (of course if you can prevent that belief it's better, but if its too late then read on.). Second step is to be taken even more strictly which is to sit down, relax and begin listing all the things you are really good at or skillful at. Don't begin judging which skill is "important" or "not important", because the key is to list it all out. Don't lie to yourself and start listing all the things you are not good at, and beginning self criticism. Just make a list. Get some pen and paper to do it (pencil is fine, or marker, or write in the sand with your finger, it doesn't matter!!!). After you made a thorough list, try to remember that no matter how bad you think of yourself, this list is not to be contaminated, because you are absolutely good at them. Don't start hypnotizing yourself into believing the opposite. Don't start believing those skills are useless, whatever they are. Maybe you believe you are really good at crying, and you believe its a very useless skill. Don't think that way. You simply don't know how to put it into practical use that can aid your success in life yet. Once you've done this, your pain shouldn't spread anymore. Third step is to look deep into your pain. Since your pain has developed, a specific comfort pocket has already been created to contain it. You will have to face it head on or you will never be able to uproot the problem. To complete this step, you have to first explain your pain in detail. Pain is a very vague emotion most of the time. There are many occurrences in which your pain can not be explained at the absence of the "source". For example, lets say you argued with your best friend and both of you "forgave each other" later on, but for some strange reason, both of you still feel an illogical "wall" or "distance". The relationship is in pain, but the reason is unclear. The reason for this phenomenon is because both of you are avoiding the real reason which is keeping the pain acknowledged and ALIVE. We usually aren't very clear as in why we are in pain. This course of action can be due to any reason, but to get rid of your pain permanently, you have to find out and do it fast. Our memories are stored in subconscious comfort pockets, so the longer you wait, the more unclear the reason of pain will become, though the truth is unchanged, it's much harder to withdraw from your memories. To do that, you will have to really think back to your pain and clearly express it into words that can describe it. Once you find out the reason for your pain, then the next step is to transform it.
Pain is a strong emotion due to it's close relationship with fear, so comfort pockets centered around it are also very strong. Forgetting and ignoring it is impossible. Don't even bother. Even if you "temporarily forget it", it will come back one day and hurt you. However, transforming it is still within the range of your abilities. There are several obstacles you have to handle to transform it.
First obstacle you should try to bypass, is the fact that you acknowledged your fear in the first place, creating this pain. Since you already did, it's impossible to reverse the deep acknowledgement. The only method remaining to resolve this obstacle is to make yourself stronger so that your pain seem much less harmful and aggressive. You will have to find more important tasks to complete. The general public relies heavily on this method but has failed to completely remedy the problem. The reason is because this method can only temporarily suppress your pain, but it doesn't contain enough strength alone to eliminate your pain completely. For example, lets say you lost your favorite pet that has been with you for ten years. Lets also say that you are two are very close, practically as close as married couples. You are in so much pain, you decided to take up tennis to forget your pain, and forget about the past. The flaw of this method is the possibility of encountering random events that can trigger this memory. Lets say you randomly meet someone who holds a pet that looks, acts, behaves exactly the same way as your dead pet. If you can't emotionally feel the pet example, then substitute the pet with family members, friends, or significant other. Imagine losing them, or maybe you already have. Any encounter has a possibility of resurfacing your past and making you suffer again. However, you'll still have to proactively find some goal to attain to bypass this first obstacle. After you complete this step, then you will have to take the next step in transformation
After you minimized the damage of your pain, then the next step is to look deeply into your pain. This step is rather difficult, so you will have to learn to take it slowly. For this step, you have to do a little meditation. If you're not a fan of meditating, now's your chance to change your mind. It doesn't involve any religion. It's only the art of mastering yourself. For this meditation, you have to relax, take deep breaths, and let your mind travel back to the time and event when you suffered the pain, for dead pet example above, that would be the moment you realized your pet was dead. I want you to think of your pain and let your mind and body suffer once more, but since we minimized it, the damage shouldn't be too serious. The reason for this exercise is because our pains are usually amplified by the pressure of the situation, so remembering it in a relaxed environment (even though you might not feel relaxed) like during meditation will allow you to look at event more clearly in a third person perspective without adding unnecessary oil to the fire of your pain. Once you remember, tears, anger, and frustration might come. It's alright, let yourself cry the cry, yell your yell. Take deep breaths and let the feelings come and go as smoothly as you can. Don't hold them in and think too much. Best option is to not think at all and just feel. Feel it come and feel it go. If you can separate different emotions apart then break them apart. Don't let them conglomerate and contaminate each other. Pain itself can be amplified by other emotions including happiness, sadness, anger, boredom, hatred, etc so be careful. Different emotions can be caused by different events you had in the past. They don't necessarily relate to your pain, but they can contribute to it, if not used right. For example, you feel pain from losing a pet you've owned for a long time. At some point you might think about the happy moments you had with your pet, and you realize those good times are over and feel pain. The pain you feel should be isolated from the happy memories you had related to the same loss. They should not contaminate each other. If you had happy memories then treat it as a once in a lifetime experience that is part of living, making it enjoyable and fruitful. Its similar to having dessert. Just savor and remember how much you enjoy the dessert you had, instead of becoming frustrated over the fact that it's poop that comes of out of your butt now. Once you completed the previous two steps then your pain is pretty much harmless, but here comes the most important part which can only happen after you completed the previous two steps.
The last obstacle to bypass is to try to understand the big picture. In other words, how this pain can help you in your future. Believe in it too. Treat it like an asset. Pain when synchronized with your whole being can aid you and become a very helpful tool. This step can be taken even after you prevented your pain from happening. For example, for the pet example earlier, consider the death of your pet as a reason to protect weak beings from being hurt. Think of destiny trying to help you understand how to feel the preciousness of life of weak creatures. You can also think of many other things the death of your pet can help you or teach how to walk the path of your life with strength.
Getting through the whole process of getting rid of pain as opposed to preventing pain can be quite time consuming and difficult so I usually don't recommend anybody take this route in life just to add some strength. There's plenty of other ways. Nevertheless, strength is strength, better than a burden. With this pain as your past and your asset, anything that repeats in the future similar to this pain will simply strengthen your resolve and increase your motivation. No matter what you do simply don't give up and you will definitely find your way.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
How to Get Your Appetite Back- Fight Against Anorexia
Here's some nonsense about regaining your appetite. It's nonsense so you have the right not to believe me. If you have anything to say then please don't hesitate to leave a comment below.
Anorexia is a pretty serious problem. Unless you mastered kundalini or any form of meditation training; then I highly doubt you can live without eating. If your problem with eating started just when your mother gave birth to you, then that will be a different issue, but I'm assuming that you are one of those people who's not eating for a "reason". The following will address everything related to that.
Do we hate eating? Not really. It's very rare to actually have hatred for food. I say rare because I've never seen anyone who has a natural tendency to hate eating. I'm not talking about eating anything specifically like meat or dairy because having dislike towards a specific group of food only can consist of other factors (such as allergic reactions or vegetarianism). Such dislikes are besides the "reason" that we're going to discuss. We'll be talking about hating to eat anything in general and the related cases.
If you're reading this then you most likely know someone that has eating issues, or are having those issues yourself. Anorexia is technically not a problem of the mind, but the problem of the emotions. This means that the problem cannot be solved with just trying to persuade yourself by thinking that "eating is necessary". Anorexia is not a problem that involves our logical thoughts or reasoning, it's a feeling that's very deep inside of you that can't be deliberately changed. To understand how to relieve yourself from anorexia, you would have to understand your emotions and reflect upon its origins to unwind this feeling.
To understand the origins of our emotions, we have to discuss about comfort pocket. "Comfort pocket" is a term I have invented for defining the real you subconsciously, the you that acts on according to your daily activities and habits. Comfort pocket is not something we are born with. A baby is not born to know how to read or speak. Comfort pockets are what we create in daily life to go through our experiences with ease and less effort. It gives us the most comfort for doing what we do without having to think twice. When you think back to the past events during the day (try it now) your events will be quite blurry and hard to recall. The reason for this is because your body and mind is acting on subconscious, in other words, your comfort pocket. The things we do was done so often everyday that we created a gap in our memories! Your body is acting according to what you usually do the same as always so that you think as little as possible and spend as little energy as possible. The events throughout the day are not lost nor non existed just cause your body was acting upon comfort pocket. Those memories are still within you, in the back of your mind and able to recall if you think hard, and deep enough. Now that we know on a basic level of what comfort pocket is, let's discuss the comfort pocket of eating.
To eat on a daily basis is based partially on instincts and partially on habit. Nobody ever said you have to eat three times a day, specifically breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nobody ever said you have to eat everyday. In fact, you can play around with your liver's glycogen storage by skipping a day of food from time to time, and eating every other day. So instead of eating on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday....till Sunday, you can surely choose to eat on just Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday! So why do most of us eat three meals a day? It's simply a pleasurable habit. It's very simple how all of us dislikes the discomfort of an empty stomach. Except for those of you who have that "reason" that brought you here to read my writing. Busy people have busy days. To complete all events, they usually skip meals cause they have no time for that kind of pleasure. When done so daily that it becomes a habit, then skipping meals eventually turns to a comfort pocket. It becomes so effortless and easy that the person doesn't even think twice about skipping meals cause it's always done this way. However, those extremes only happen when you develop a comfort pocket that overlaps your comfort pocket for eating and takes over. That sounds decently confusing. To summarize, we have a comfort pocket for eating but there are also those who have an excuse for not eating (and does it so daily) and let a newly formed comfort pocket take over. Let me state honestly, that this is the "reason" for anorexia.
Clearly what I'm getting at is that people develop anorexia based on a brand new comfort pocket. Not that all people can complete a comfort pocket of not eating, but if they do, they can develop anorexia. Comfort pocket holds beliefs, experiences, habits, techniques, and whole loads of other stuff, so it's technically a brain you can't control, or an addiction you can't get rid of ---unless, that is you overwhelm it with an even stronger comfort pocket. I listed "belief" as one of the element of comfort pocket, so once the comfort pocket is established, it can no longer be ridden off unless you cover it up. I have stated in previous articles, destroying a comfort pocket is unnecessary and dangerous. The daily activities that we're so used to is our comfort pocket, destroying a comfort pocket is destroying a common habit. So it is absurd to destroy your comfort pocket forcefully, or else you are very likely to turn insane. Have you ever had a very strong belief for something? This belief is so strong that you can argue with anyone that tries to persuade you against your belief. That's a kind of comfort pocket. People with anorexia developed a belief, one so strong that if they tried to eat forcefully, they are likely to do more torture to themselves (like committing suicide) than they already were. The more high quality (and more developed) their comfort world is built, the more dangerous it'll be if that comfort pocket is destroyed. To sum it up, the solution to handling a comfort pocket for anorexia, will be developing a belief that is even more reasonable than "not eating".
People with anorexia don't really hate eating. Their comfort pocket will remind them from time to time to eat, but the "belief" for not eating is so strong, it forces back their original comfort pocket for "eating to survive". If you studied biology, then you'll probably realize it's almost like a cell trying to self destruct due to genetic mutation. Comfort pocket has many doors, or elements to it that can be approached from the outside. For example, if the target can simply develop a habit that constitute an element of eating every day that's "impossible" to throw up, then that might work. Or you can develop a game where you challenge the target to keep the swallowed food in their stomach for a certain amount of time without throwing up, and allowing them to throw up after certain amounts of time. As days pass by, the target will develop a technique to fight against their current comfort pocket of disgust for food, and hold in the food longer without throwing up. Even suggesting such technique can give the person a more high- spirited look-out to what they have to surpass. If they master this or whatever good technique you can think of, then as days pass by, they won't have chance to throw up anymore, because the food is digested by the time they feel like throwing up. These are just examples. Look at my writing about comfort pocket abridged, or the long version to figure out what element of comfort pocket you can work at to handle your, or your friend's problem. Comfort pocket have arms that can link to possibilities so you will have to find opportunities that can be approached to these links for you to reach the core of the problem
Anorexia is not a comfort pocket that came alone. In fact, it must have a source that triggered it. For example, let's say a weight lifter has anorexia. The original source of his problem could be because someone commented that his body has too much fat that can not be lost in time for a "contest" for example. Figuring out the source of the problem should be your main priority, and try to find links to the core of the problem. Sometimes, knowing the source of the problem doesn't necessarily solve the problem, because the target might no longer be concerned about the source of the problem, for example, someone made fun of the target, but rather the target might feel "obligation" or "appropriateness" to stay depressed as a habit that is developed into a subtle comfort pocket much earlier in their lifetime.
To sum it up, finding the source of the problem or using one method to change the mind of the target is not enough. You must search deeper into target's past to find out why certain beliefs are so stubbornly kept.
Anorexia is a pretty serious problem. Unless you mastered kundalini or any form of meditation training; then I highly doubt you can live without eating. If your problem with eating started just when your mother gave birth to you, then that will be a different issue, but I'm assuming that you are one of those people who's not eating for a "reason". The following will address everything related to that.
Do we hate eating? Not really. It's very rare to actually have hatred for food. I say rare because I've never seen anyone who has a natural tendency to hate eating. I'm not talking about eating anything specifically like meat or dairy because having dislike towards a specific group of food only can consist of other factors (such as allergic reactions or vegetarianism). Such dislikes are besides the "reason" that we're going to discuss. We'll be talking about hating to eat anything in general and the related cases.
If you're reading this then you most likely know someone that has eating issues, or are having those issues yourself. Anorexia is technically not a problem of the mind, but the problem of the emotions. This means that the problem cannot be solved with just trying to persuade yourself by thinking that "eating is necessary". Anorexia is not a problem that involves our logical thoughts or reasoning, it's a feeling that's very deep inside of you that can't be deliberately changed. To understand how to relieve yourself from anorexia, you would have to understand your emotions and reflect upon its origins to unwind this feeling.
To understand the origins of our emotions, we have to discuss about comfort pocket. "Comfort pocket" is a term I have invented for defining the real you subconsciously, the you that acts on according to your daily activities and habits. Comfort pocket is not something we are born with. A baby is not born to know how to read or speak. Comfort pockets are what we create in daily life to go through our experiences with ease and less effort. It gives us the most comfort for doing what we do without having to think twice. When you think back to the past events during the day (try it now) your events will be quite blurry and hard to recall. The reason for this is because your body and mind is acting on subconscious, in other words, your comfort pocket. The things we do was done so often everyday that we created a gap in our memories! Your body is acting according to what you usually do the same as always so that you think as little as possible and spend as little energy as possible. The events throughout the day are not lost nor non existed just cause your body was acting upon comfort pocket. Those memories are still within you, in the back of your mind and able to recall if you think hard, and deep enough. Now that we know on a basic level of what comfort pocket is, let's discuss the comfort pocket of eating.
To eat on a daily basis is based partially on instincts and partially on habit. Nobody ever said you have to eat three times a day, specifically breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nobody ever said you have to eat everyday. In fact, you can play around with your liver's glycogen storage by skipping a day of food from time to time, and eating every other day. So instead of eating on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday....till Sunday, you can surely choose to eat on just Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday! So why do most of us eat three meals a day? It's simply a pleasurable habit. It's very simple how all of us dislikes the discomfort of an empty stomach. Except for those of you who have that "reason" that brought you here to read my writing. Busy people have busy days. To complete all events, they usually skip meals cause they have no time for that kind of pleasure. When done so daily that it becomes a habit, then skipping meals eventually turns to a comfort pocket. It becomes so effortless and easy that the person doesn't even think twice about skipping meals cause it's always done this way. However, those extremes only happen when you develop a comfort pocket that overlaps your comfort pocket for eating and takes over. That sounds decently confusing. To summarize, we have a comfort pocket for eating but there are also those who have an excuse for not eating (and does it so daily) and let a newly formed comfort pocket take over. Let me state honestly, that this is the "reason" for anorexia.
Clearly what I'm getting at is that people develop anorexia based on a brand new comfort pocket. Not that all people can complete a comfort pocket of not eating, but if they do, they can develop anorexia. Comfort pocket holds beliefs, experiences, habits, techniques, and whole loads of other stuff, so it's technically a brain you can't control, or an addiction you can't get rid of ---unless, that is you overwhelm it with an even stronger comfort pocket. I listed "belief" as one of the element of comfort pocket, so once the comfort pocket is established, it can no longer be ridden off unless you cover it up. I have stated in previous articles, destroying a comfort pocket is unnecessary and dangerous. The daily activities that we're so used to is our comfort pocket, destroying a comfort pocket is destroying a common habit. So it is absurd to destroy your comfort pocket forcefully, or else you are very likely to turn insane. Have you ever had a very strong belief for something? This belief is so strong that you can argue with anyone that tries to persuade you against your belief. That's a kind of comfort pocket. People with anorexia developed a belief, one so strong that if they tried to eat forcefully, they are likely to do more torture to themselves (like committing suicide) than they already were. The more high quality (and more developed) their comfort world is built, the more dangerous it'll be if that comfort pocket is destroyed. To sum it up, the solution to handling a comfort pocket for anorexia, will be developing a belief that is even more reasonable than "not eating".
People with anorexia don't really hate eating. Their comfort pocket will remind them from time to time to eat, but the "belief" for not eating is so strong, it forces back their original comfort pocket for "eating to survive". If you studied biology, then you'll probably realize it's almost like a cell trying to self destruct due to genetic mutation. Comfort pocket has many doors, or elements to it that can be approached from the outside. For example, if the target can simply develop a habit that constitute an element of eating every day that's "impossible" to throw up, then that might work. Or you can develop a game where you challenge the target to keep the swallowed food in their stomach for a certain amount of time without throwing up, and allowing them to throw up after certain amounts of time. As days pass by, the target will develop a technique to fight against their current comfort pocket of disgust for food, and hold in the food longer without throwing up. Even suggesting such technique can give the person a more high- spirited look-out to what they have to surpass. If they master this or whatever good technique you can think of, then as days pass by, they won't have chance to throw up anymore, because the food is digested by the time they feel like throwing up. These are just examples. Look at my writing about comfort pocket abridged, or the long version to figure out what element of comfort pocket you can work at to handle your, or your friend's problem. Comfort pocket have arms that can link to possibilities so you will have to find opportunities that can be approached to these links for you to reach the core of the problem
Anorexia is not a comfort pocket that came alone. In fact, it must have a source that triggered it. For example, let's say a weight lifter has anorexia. The original source of his problem could be because someone commented that his body has too much fat that can not be lost in time for a "contest" for example. Figuring out the source of the problem should be your main priority, and try to find links to the core of the problem. Sometimes, knowing the source of the problem doesn't necessarily solve the problem, because the target might no longer be concerned about the source of the problem, for example, someone made fun of the target, but rather the target might feel "obligation" or "appropriateness" to stay depressed as a habit that is developed into a subtle comfort pocket much earlier in their lifetime.
To sum it up, finding the source of the problem or using one method to change the mind of the target is not enough. You must search deeper into target's past to find out why certain beliefs are so stubbornly kept.
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