I've written about this before but I only mentioned it briefly. I wanted to update and expand on this subject because it's really important. You can find the link to the original blog I labeled as this topic.
This is a strategy that I have employed many times in the past. The words that we use and the stories we tell ourselves...and others about our lives actually creates them. I was once very pessimistic...oh who am I kidding? I was super depressed and had major anxiety. Some days I couldn't motivate myself to get out of bed let alone leave the house! I grew up feeling very lonely and unsupported by the universe. The mantra I had learned as a child was, "Life sucks and then you die," along with, "I am nobody, nothing, no one." If every word, action and deed creates our reality what I was creating was a 'life that sucks' and 'death.' I would tell myself this every time that I hit a set back. Then I would dwell on that set back like crazy. That was the internal story I repeated to myself...my early journals are full of statements such as, "I'll never find someone to love," and, "I'll always be alone." Wow! Talk about creating a reality that I didn't want! Yet, no one told me that my words were powerful and that my attitude about life creates my experiences. I had no other example as the people I attracted into my life were equally negative and had the same attitude that they were a victim...and that life was punishment. That produced a lot of reinforcement for the negative beliefs that I held...worse yet, when I told people how I felt they told me that I was having a pity party and I needed to "knock it off." Being told to "Knock it off," or that, "Tomorrow will be better," or any of the platitudes that people with depression or anxiety receive from those who don't have this frame of mind doesn't work. However, I am here to tell you those states of mind are not permanent and a person can transform themselves. If you find that you have a similar reinforcing negative belief system the best way I learned to deal with it was to, "Fake It Until You Make It." Now, some will sit there and say that is not being authentic. Well, this work does need to be done along with the work I've outlined as we worked through the chakras...healing the inner child, working on giving and receiving affection, reclaiming our will-power, recognizing/integrating our Shadow and learning to communicate. What You Resist Persists Three years ago when I was going through the Darkest Night of My Soul (see a YouTube video on that here: https://youtu.be/aA-OWeBtujQ) my friend Michael did a reading for me. He told me this very potent phrase and it really hit home. At the time I was resisting accepting my daughters death. I was resisting the grieving process. I didn't want to lose her a second time by giving up on her and I felt I needed to grieve to remember her the rest of my life...that I shouldn't be allowed to be happy because I hadn't fought hard enough to protect her. Here is where working with your Shadow is so important. This is a huge phase of self-healing because as long as you resist the Shadow you're going to keep subconsciously reworking the same pattern of behavior expecting a different result. This isn't on a conscious level and you may go through a cycle where you feel better even if you don't deal with your shadow. Eventually you will have something minor go wrong which will send you spiraling down the drain of despair and the shadow will be bigger and stronger then before! Usually, this subconscious program happens as a result of childhood trauma. That's when we originally start constructing our Shadow as a coping mechanism to survive. At that time we are at the mercy of our parents when it comes to constructing our reality. Once we hit 21, however, we can't sit here and continue to blame our parents. At this point, we are adults, and we have the full rights and capacity to start creating our own personal reality. We must face and integrate the Shadow...all that we have resisted, rejected and all that we have repressed for the sake of survival. As long as we resist and repress...it will control our lives on a subconscious level and we will never understand why we make the poor decision that lead us to such despair over and over again. To really get this ship corrected it's going to require an entire overhaul. Simply 'thinking happy thoughts' will not do the trick...we're are going to have to literally reprogram our thinking. Fake It Until You Make It Twice I had the rug pulled out from under me. Spirit and my soul really conspired for me to end up on the Spiritual Path that I walked and to reach this point in my life. I can see how it was my primary goal to do this work and share it. Spirit just wasn't going to let me sleep through this incarnation! This is called the Wounded Healer Archetype. I can't say that was ever my conscious intention prior to the work I've done in the last four years to ever write a blog like this one or make YouTube videos. However, since this was a life lesson it didn't come all that naturally and I really had to put in some mental elbow grease. When I left my ex-husband a broken being and when I became utterly annihilated by the loss of my daughter I didn't think things could become better again. In both cases I thought my life was over. I left my jobs, which in both cases (in my mind at least) had given me value as a person and defined me. I left the people I knew at those jobs and my entire way of life behind which was very hard. In both cases I had to start my life over completely. Going From Toxic To Healthy What I had to learn was the Fake It Until You Make It Strategy. You can't go from being an extremely negative pessimistic being to an enlightened happy peaceful being with the snap of your fingers or a magic pill (and I can say that the psychiatric drugs are absolutely not going to help you when it comes to your thinking...they will turn you into a walking zombie that makes you groggy and feel like your walking in a fog but that's it). Reprogramming your thinking take effort. You're going to have to go through the Hermit Phase of the Awakening experience and that's fine! First, turn off the news and television. Start paying attention to what your filling your mind with...have you been watching conspiracy theories on YouTube? Turn that off! Do you watch a sitcom on television and wish your life was like that...put it to the side for a little while (none of what Hollywood writes is ever grounded in reality). As they say...if you put garbage in you're going to get garbage out! The Fake It Until You Make it strategy means that when I felt absolutely horrible I had to say I was fantastic. Not because that's what other people wanted to hear (I am a rebel, I'd prefer to tell them what they don't want to hear) but because feeling that way was *MY* goal. I applied this strategy for my well being happiness and...I had to do it despite of other people because I had surrounded myself with some pretty negative ones. Again, this is reprogramming your mind. When someone asks you how you are doing and you share all of the personal woes of your life with them...you are placing an order with the universe. You are saying on a subconscious level, "Ooh, this is part of my identity, this gives me something to talk about and makes me interesting...I want more of this!" If you have a buddy at work or that you call to share all of the woes of the world with...where you compare who has it worse and who is suffering more...you're just reinforcing the negative experiences that you share with them. (This is different from venting...venting is just discussing an event that perturbed you and with the right friends they can help you see the bright side or see that you're over reacting or solve the problem- that is healthy...but competing for who has the worse life is definitely not!). By participating in such a conversation you are reinforcing the story of, "I want to win the competition for the worst life ever!" Then the universe goes, "Your wish is my command!" Then it gives you more misery...because that's what you asked for right? Miserable people always try to out do each other on the miserable victim scale...because it gives them an excuse not to put much effort into life or changing their life. Since they have an excuse they can use that to make others feel guilty and get benefits for it...usually more days off of work, their spouse shouldering most of the financial burden or it allows them to say unkind things 'they don't really mean but they're going through a lot.' Eventually you'll discover that this type of person has a label...we call them toxic. If you want a Debbie Downer in your life that's constantly saying they are a loser and they aren't ever going to get what they want...well, you're just looking to be abused. Most of the time these people are narcissists. I will admit I was utterly and completely toxic myself at points in my life. When you first start off on this path you need to cut these toxic people out of your life...especially if that's the majority of the people that you spend your time with because they are reinforcing your negative reality experience (don't worry, after you have a firm grasp on a new reality it's not hard to deal with them, although, they may try to avoid you or change you back because you're no longer on the same mental page which will make them feel very uncomfortable). Fake It Until You Make It At the heart of this strategy is doing exactly what I said...Faking it until you make it your reality. No matter how bad your day has been reply, "I'm fantastic," whenever your asked and, better yet, make it a rule to ask every person you interact with how their day is...and you will create the opportunity to tell them your day is fantastic (plus, if they are a service person such as Starbucks, A Grocery Clerk or Cashier, Bank Teller or a Fast Food worker you'll have the satisfaction of watching them react with shock, their eyes light up and 95% of the time they'll react with gratitude...and ask how your day is giving you the opportunity to tell them that you are Fantastic!) Eventually, you'll start to say this with great enthusiasm, reflexively and before long it will become true. People's reactions to that reply are startling. Some people will go, "Man I wish I could answer that way! I like you!" Some may say, "Oh really?" very sarcastically (maybe because they've never had a fantastic day in their life and they don't have the capacity to believe someone be fantastic). Some may just remain silent and try to get out of your presence as soon as possible. That can be a fun part of the experience...paying attention to who reacts to the statement in what way. Pay attention to the body language of that person because you'll notice it's the people who are either very happy or moderately happy that will respond enthusiastically to that statement. Don't you want to attract more people like that into your life...don't you want your work environment to consist of people who are happy to be there and deep meaningful relationships with happy people? The overwhelmingly positive response helps to reinforce the feeling. People may be curious to see why you can respond that way asking, "What's going on that's so good in your life?" Then you can tell them that you're starting off on an amazing road of transformation! By putting out that positive energy you will get it back ten fold. For some reason, the negative types will just flee into the shadows (however, if you dwell on the negative the boogymen will start coming out of the woodwork making your life severely difficult...and if you don't integrate your shadow it will come back bigger and scarier then ever if you experience a set back...as long as you are in that dualistic state of Shadow/Persona you're going to experience periods of joy and despair but the Fake It Until You Make It strategy can help even those out until you achieve unification). Conclusion Every word we say sends out an intention into the world...people in the spiritual community call this a vibration. The cosmos is created to respond to our desires/needs and wants without bias...it sends back to us the same energetic vibration we send out. If we focus on the negative...we will create more of that experience. Often, it does benefit in some subconscious way...allowing us the time we need to rest that we may not allow ourselves to otherwise or giving us an excuse to not even put forth the effort to try and make our lives better...because why bother if you have a self-sabotaging personality? As our mind set changes and we start to wake up to focusing on the positive...we start celebrating the small victories. Waking up every day at 8am if that's our goal instead of sleeping all day. Eating a small container of Ben & Jerry's ice cream or celebrating the completion of a new project. Celebrate the minor accomplishments and you'll graduate to the bigger ones. Eventually, you'll learn to let go of the small stuff. You learn not to sweat the small stuff or dwell on what goes wrong...wishing that you could go back into the past to change it and constantly being caught off guard when the same event occurs again. One day you'll wake up and realize you do feel fantastic...when someone asks you how you're doing you'll say, "Fantastic!" without hesitation and your life will start reflecting that...work won't be so much of a chore, doing errands won't be a chore and you'll attract extremely positive healthy relationships into your life...and that my friends is Manifestation! Now, this stage only applies early on in your Spiritual Awakening. Although, this stage is a huge accomplishment! There are much bigger and better states of mind on the horizon as we continue! Finally, here is a blog where I celebrated the success of this technique two years ago: https://bridgetkorns.weebly.com/blog/category/fake-it-until-you-make-it.
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Brave Soul! May Your Journey On The Path Of The Seeker Bring You Joy and Peace! I'm currently posting every Saturday. With a new addition the family I have pre-scheduled most posts through December 2022. Full Moon Posts will contain up-to-date content when I can get to them. Thank you so much for your support and understanding! This is a place where you can encounter new spiritual ideas that have helped me develop as an Individual On The Path of the Seeker. Take or Leave this information as you see fit. Archives
April 2024
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