Learning About Yourself, Part 1
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Over the past 2 weeks I have been on a low information diet and rather than taking in more information, most of which I never really needed, I have turned my attention to sharing what I already know with people about health, abundance, and happiness.
However the information that I am trying to get during this 28 day detox from learning is actually learning about myself.
I have found that just in the last two weeks that learning about yourself is so very important, and when you know about yourself then you will instantly know more about others.
You may have heard in the past that the Universe is a mirror – basically, what you see is what you are, on some level. For many of you this is often hard to hear. You will say things to yourself such as: “That isn’t true – I’m not ‘war’, I’m not ‘disease’, I’m not ‘poverty’” since these are the things you are seeing. However I would like to offer this: Rather than labelling the exact things you see, ‘war’, ‘disease’, ‘poverty’, notice the feeling or the ‘frequency’ of what you are seeing.
For example: War, disease and poverty are all relatively negative in comparison to beauty, nature, loving relationships, happiness and health. If you are noticing the negative aspects of life, are your internal thoughts possibly negative?
Since I have started watching my thoughts and noticing them as they go by I have found that I have a lot more negative thoughts that I would have first imagined and would have liked to have. So I decided to work on the root cause of the issue.
One of the key aspects of negativity in people’s lives is fear. For me, my fear comes from a fear of failing and not being successful. Does this come from the types of media I grew up with, my peers, my parents? Who knows, however it is there. I believe this is what causes the constant desire to learn new information and to constantly be overwhelming myself with too much information and resources.
So how am I tackling this problem? I am using a process called The Work by Byron Katie. A long time ago I read the book Loving What Is by Byron Katie, found it very enjoyable but didn’t understand that the process was learning about yourself and after reading quickly discarded the book to the shelf.
You can find The Work here where there is a full description and downloads to complete the process.
A basic run-down of The Work is as follows:
1. Find a statement that you currently believe to be true. This might be something that is particularly troubling you such as: “I am fat.”
2. You would then start the process of the 4 Questions. The first being: “Is it true, that you are fat?” At this point you might think to yourself, “Yes, of course I am, that’s why I think it.”
3. The next question is: “Is it ABSOLUTELY TRUE that you are fat?” There is only one answer to this question, and that is “No.” Of course you are not the personification of fat, whatever level of body-fat you have. You also have muscle, bone, skin, blood, organs, so No, you are not absolutely fat!
4. The third question asks: “How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought I am fat?” Typically you will answer that you are unhappy, or sad that you have let yourself get this way.
5. Next ask: “Who would you be WITHOUT the thought I am fat?” This is a harder question because it takes some real introspective looking. But if you think about it, without the thought that you are fat, you would be thin, or happy at least.
6. Now to end the process you should take your original statement and Turn It Around: Instead of “I am fat”, you would say “I am not fat”, or “I am thin”.
The Work can be done on any aspect of your life and you will truly take a look at your reality. Byron Katie also suggests doing The Work on “your neighbour” or someone that you are maybe angry/sad/confused with and then turn the statements around on them as well.
In doing this, you will learn how you see the world, and how you see yourself thus making it easier to make conscious decisions about your life from moment to moment.
The last two weeks for me has been a great learning curve.
Give The Work a go and let me know below what you’ve learnt about yourself!
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