Who cares what people think? I do what I want!

Most of us do care what people think, whether conscious or unconscious. We have been taught to care what our families, friends and community think about our choices. It’s another way of controlling our behavior with guilt. You can see a lot of it manifested in the tabloids about celebrities. (Can you believe so and so did that??!!!) Tabloids are a stomping ground for judging humans we have projected our own self worth onto.

We all are subject to “feeling bad” about our choices if it does not benefit the greater good. Actually, it’s very important that we do what is right for us, and all will benefit, though it might not be apparent immediately.

Now is the time for us to find our right place in the world. One of my teachers always says, “In nature, you don’t see a tree trying to be a bush, or a fox trying to be a wolf. Each plant and animal is an essential part of the ecosystem.” The human ecosystem also benefits when each person is doing what they love. It may seem a long way before we will allow everyone to do what they love, but there has been a great shift in this direction.

Parenting has changed a lot to allow children to be themselves instead of fitting into the family “mold.” New ways of teaching are developing to allow individual expression and child-led learning, as with Wallingford and Montessori schools, as well as homeschooling.

Have you ever had the experience of telling family or friends about something you are going to do and felt a weight in your stomach that did not feel good, and shifted what you did so they felt better about it? This reaction is guilt in you, or blame coming from them. Ever experienced a guilt trip? The good news is that it is easy to release the guilt. Once the guilt is released, you can make your choice based on what is right for you. This is another way that Process Coaching can assist you. We can find what is bothering you and get to the heart of the matter. We use Judgment Release plus looking into what you really, really want with Exploring Core Desire. We do not need guilt to be loving humans, but to be loving to ourselves spreads out to all people that we touch.

(To be continued, next month, with How to Accept Our Loved Ones Choices.) For more information about Process Coaching, go to http://www.ProcessCoaching.com.

Self Love and Hurting the Ones We Love

It can seem very difficult to do what we want also because we are empathic beings. We have the awareness and often it is sentient (feeling) awareness that our loved ones feel pain by our choices.  Discovering what we want is the easy part when speaking directly to our core desire. The second part is to give our desire what she wants and follow through to help, and make it so. Then, we must allow others to have the feelings they have about our choices.

Sometimes just that you exist is enough to hurt another, but again it is not you who is causing the pain.  It seems like we are the cause because we are the triggers. But we are not the cause. The cause can be difficult to see when the feelings are in a state of denial from the past, so we blame the trigger.

Then we avoid doing what we want or hiding the facts that we have done what we want in the moment, even if it’s a mistake that we would like to rewrite if we could, rather than hurt another. So now we are truly hurting ourselves in shame, another facet of guilt and judgment. Because we are so enmeshed in our relationships with each other we find it difficult to differentiate between the trigger, the other person’s feelings and our own feelings.

In Process work we use Perceptual Positions to differentiate and follow feelings back to the source of self denial and pain, to get to the real matter at hand. We practice in retrospect until we can use the tools in the moment of a trigger.

The Perceptual Positions and Judgment Release make it easy to let go of bad “feelings” of guilt, shame and even blame. Compassion and love are able to come through and shine light on the situation.

The bigger picture is revealed and it can be seen that what is best for one person, allows each to find their right place without tip toeing around to please the other.