At the beginning of Inspiration for Success I was researching for it and subscribed to several ‘self help’ type sites. One that stuck with me was and is the site of Morty Lefkoe and today I found a link to his post from yesterday. I like the ideas of Morty Lefkoe as it seems they are really true and can help people to, well, suffer less or lead more happy lives.
His post from today was about how humans suffer from giving meaning to events, not the events themselves. And just before there were two events I did not like, which was part of the reason why I clicked on the link in his e-mail. So I tried the suggestion of Morty Lefkoe to separate the events from the meaning I gave to them and it gave me some relief. I’m still a bit anxious though, as I did not feel OK today and those two little events I didn’t like upset me more than usual. So I’ll just do the exercise here below for my two events, for myself as to quiet my nerves, but also for you, so you’ll have a sample.
The first event was one of our dogs, Adam, crying, make a sound like having pain. And this has a long history, as Adam has had a very bad skin disease (mange) for years and we were never able to have it cured for as far as we know it’s a combination of his weak immune system together with the mites being resistant to treatment with Ivermectin, the best treatment we know about for this type of disease. So Adam is in very bad shape and continuously scratching and licking himself as the disease causes very bad itch. So the event is ‘Adam is crying because he has hurt himself again licking or something’. And the second event is my partner reminding me that he wants to euthanize Adam, which I am too scared of deciding on and doing. And this whole thing triggers an enormous amount of thoughts. So these thoughts create an awful lot of meaning to this simple event of a dog crying and make me suffer a lot. Thoughts like ‘I should have treated him better’ or ‘maybe my partner is right’. Also thoughts like ‘I should have found ways to earn more so we could have treated him’. So while writing this, the main meaning I give to this event is an enormous amount of guilt, an enormous amount of ‘should haves’.
And now I don’t know how to continue as I’m not writing anymore about separating the event of a dog crying from the meaning I gave to the event. So for those interested in that, better check site of Morty Lefkoe as he has very good ideas about ‘separating meaning from events’ and what I know him most for: getting rid of limiting beliefs.
So how to go from here, as I feel very anxious now and I’m not sure how to convert that into something inspiring for you, which is still my intention with this site, even with my blog items. And well, when I am in a state like this I often refer to the internet, just start searching for something like ‘how to turn anxiety into excitement’. So I just did and I found this, even though I remember some other post from a while ago I like better. Useful suggestions though and I like most the end of the post (she’s was in acting school): “Your audience wants you to succeed.”. How true is the last. No one wants another person to fail, everybody wants everybody else (also) to succeed.
And there are some other pages about this and, I think unfortunately, the page on ask-gratitude is a bit lower in the search results, but it gave me good tools before to turn my anxiety into excitement.
The main thing though with this kind of (negative) feelings is to start just accepting them, letting them be there. Keep in mind they’re just your feelings. And they’re yours, they’re you. And there is nothing wrong with you, you’re OK as you are, whatever situation or state you’re in.